THE EVOLVING UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

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What am I doing going to a talk on the evolving university library? Haven't I left all that behind me long ago?

It's true that in UCD studying politics, in the last century, I had to get a note from my tutor to get out a book which the Catholic church disapproved of and which was stored behind the librarian's counter on a very high shelf indeed.

Well, apparently all has changed, changed utterly and a terrible beauty of sorts has been born.

The challenge is immense: from the need to digitise existing resources, through how they are then made available both to researchers and the wider public, to how are we going to digitally conserve the present for future generations.

You might think that in today's digital world this could be achieved at the mere push of a button.

Sandra Collins

Not so. And nobody knows this better than Sandra Collins, Director of the National Library of Ireland. Sandra introduced Helen Shenton, Librarian and Archivist at TCD, who was going to lead us through this complex territory, explaining the global challenges and how TCD is responding to them.

First, though, I have to recall Sandra's recent TEDx talk in UCD on this very subject, where, in simple language, she explained the parameters of the enormous task facing us.

Helen Shenton

Helen Shenton came to TCD in 2014 and she was well aware of the task ahead. She was, however, undaunted having worked miracles already in the V&A, the British Library and Harvard. Her experience was vast and she was now bringing it to bear on this institution.

She is not only dealing with digitising what is there, she is also busy figuring out how to use the spaces that become available when material is digitised and the physical copies are then consigned to storage.

TCD Long Room

She is unlikely to strip the Long Room of its books, which at this stage are almost part of the structure of the building. She has already told us how much she is in awe of this wonderful room and how she has given up explaining it to visitors. She just steps back and lets the visitor experience the sheer wonder of it.

Whatever about all the digital and virtual stuff, Helen is also a great respecter of physical space and she envisages the function of the library in the widest sense possible. It is not just a place for reading but for learning, networking and socialising. People also learn from each other so socio-academic space is vital.

Library and College's central location

While TCD's physical space is limited by the surrounding streets, the whole digital revolution opens up the possibility of re-conceiving existing space as it is freed up and there can be new premises acquired off campus. All this without losing TCD's great asset of a city centre location.

And, of course, developments go beyond the boundaries of this one college. Each university/college needs to have its own place of excellence in the scheme of things. Substantial duplication, for which there may have been some justification in the past, needs to be eliminated and the capacity released put to creative use.

Helen & Sandra, all smiles

This is just giving you a flavour of what Helen is at. If you are curious for more, the whole thing is spelled out in detail in the library's strategy, the cover of which is reproduced at the top of this post.

And so, after an enthusiastic and fast moving talk from one librarian, hosted by another "librarian", we call a halt with smiles all round.

[Talk was at the National Library of Ireland at 1pm on 19/1/2017]

Shush

And what the hell is this, I hear you ask.

Well, for starters, it's not one of my where is it quiz items.

It is very much a what is this item. I know where it is, I just didn't know what it was.

It is sticking out of the wall of my local library and I had originally been told that it had something to do with the traffic. I came to the erroneous conclusion that it was connected with the traffic lights and possibly feeding traffic frequencies and densities at the lights back to base.

So, when I saw the man from the Council poking at it this morning I decided to ask him and he told me all about it.

The yoke sticking out is a microphone that monitors ambient sound levels and feeds them back to base. It is one of a number of such monitoring stations around the city which are used to check the accuracy of the levels reported for the whole city and published in the Council's annual noisemaps.

He told me, for instance, that the noise level at the interpretive centre on the beach at the bottom of the Causeway is at least as noisy as at the library. So Mother Nature, despite her reserve, is not the quietest in the world.

Below is a detail of the Raheny area from the noisemap for Dublin North Central during the daytime in 2012.

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The road going from left to two thirds up the right is the Howth road. The section shown is from Sybil Hill (left) to Blackbanks (right) where it joins the coast road. The noisier road at the top left is a section of the Malahide Road from the Artane Roundabout (bottom) to the Tonlegee Road (top). And the extreme bottom right of the picture is the bird sanctuary on the coast road at the bottom of Watermill Road.

I have marked the location of the Raheny library on the map (click the map for a larger image). You can get a load of the background on the Council's noisy website and also see the original of the map from which the above detail is taken.

So, shush now!

Dublin City Council is listening.

Lending Library

What is a library?

It's a place where you get books out on loan and where you can consult a lot of general reference works. It is also a reading room where you can sit and read their books or even bring your own.

At least that's how it used to be.



Today your local library is so much more. Quite apart from automating book loans by (almost) replacing friendly and efficient staff with intelligent machines (see above), the library has become a much wider community facility and focal point.


This is a current view inside my local library, the second busiest in the city of Dublin. You can see the desk, which still does a brisk business despite the intelligent machines at the door. You can also see one of the exhibitions which turn up regularly throughout the year. This particular one displays some of the really excellent photography of members of the Sutton Camera Club. Other exhibitions cover the work of local artists and aspects of local history, and there are yet other, more general, Dublin based exhibitions which travel around the city's libraries.


The study space is a new feature. This gives students a chance to study uninterrupted in a quiet environment away from home. The library provides free Wifi to all its clients. There is another space in a secluded corner which hosts language classes and conversation groups. The children's spacious area is also requisitioned on some evenings for illustrated talks on a wide range of subjects. These are very popular and well attended.


And if you don't have access to the internet at home, for one reason or another, the local library is your only man. You can book hourly slots on one of the four open computers. This not only allows you to access the internet generally, but you also have free access to a number of databases which would cost you at home, such as the Irish Times digital archive and the Irish Newspaper Archive which covers the Independent and Freeman's Journal at national level and is steadily increasing its coverage of the provincial papers.


The children's area has been reorganised from the old days when the emphasis was simply on taking out books. As you can see from the photo above, the emphasis is now on space, allowing plenty of room for both reading and joint project work.


There are even outdoor facilities. This chess/draughts bench sits in the middle of the front lawn and provides good healthy open air brain stimulation to players of all ages.


Not to forget the clothes (charity) and bottle (recycling) banks.

I was mulling over this post, and had raised it with my local librarian when, coincidentally, the Irish Independent carried an article on how to save money by using your library. It's well worth a read.

I intended the post to draw people's attention to the significantly enhanced role of the local library in today's world, not only to provoke its use but to sound a warning note. Library services are provided free at the point of use but they incur a significant resource cost and can be a tempting target for public expenditure cutbacks or charges.

A greater appreciation of this wonderful service and its universal availability will hopefully encourage people to defend it agains such depredations.


By the way, the library carpark is most definitely not a place to park your car while you go to the gym, do your shopping or raid the hole in the wall across the road. The car parking is to facilitate the public using all the other facilities provided by the library.

Update: Raheny Library celebrated its 40th anniversary on 5/12/2012.

Par Carking* - Spreading the Burden

* par = equal, carking = worrying

Car parking space is becoming increasingly limited, not only in the centre of Dublin city, but also in the suburbs.

One solution would be to cut down on the use of cars and make greater use of public transport. For this two things, at least, would be required: (i) a public transport system with wide coverage and which ran on time, and (ii) large parking areas for "park and ride" (or "kiss and ride" as it is amusingly called in the US of A).

There is a DART station in Raheny which does not have any such parking area provided by the transport authorities. DART commuters therefore took advantage of existing car parks in the local supermarket complex, the RC church and the local public library.

The shops in the supermarket complex got pissed off that this space was consequently not available to customers. So it introduced a 3 hour maximum parking time with clamping. This didn't work because it wasn't enforced, so, instead of enforcing it a one hour maximum was introduced. The complex houses a supermarket, restaurant, bank, post office, chemist, hairdresser, newsagent, video rental store, health clinic and lawyer. You could be queueing for the better part of an hour in some of these.

Anyway parking pressure shifted to the church where the substantial car park was then always full. Pressure also came on the library, which had a limited number of spaces for library users.

The library was the first of these two to take action. They disposed of office worker DART users by closing the car park outside of library hours (8pm to 10am Monday to Friday). The library authorities feel they can't go any further than this blanket action as a more selective system would cost money and staff resources. While this action dealt a death blow to daily DARTers the spaces are still abused by those going to the gym and those banking across the road. I recently had to avail of nearby pay and display parking to use the library. This has roused my usually supressed vigilante instincts and some day I'll stake out the library car park for a day and see what happens. Hope I don't meet too many of my neighbours abusing the system.

The church, after many years deliberations, has now finally moved on the matter. This park has recently gone pay and display and a notice circulated to parishioners has assured them that they will not be charged while attending church services. I wondered myself for a good while whether it would be possible to implement such a system and more or less gave up. But the church has clearly solved this problem to its own satisfaction. Perhaps it has organised the inspectors/clampers to discreetly stay away during church services. No doubt the removal of charges on Saturday evening after 5pm and the
whole of Sunday will cater for the once a week mass-goers.

The point is still, however, how the DARTers and bussers are to be catered for. If the authorities want the public to park and ride they will have to provide appropriate car parking space and, certainly as far as the busses are concerned, get them running on time. I am still looking at alternating long gaps and convoys on the bus routes.

Are these people really serious? Cutting bus services because the country is broke is only going to make it more broke and cause a lot of misery to the very people who can't afford private transport.

We've had enough of the cosy relationship with the developers and builders. The authorities now need to stand up to the private car users and provide a proper public transport service.