Back to School... for an MLIS

Guest post by Lorraine Curran, who has recently converted her Graduate Diploma into the Master's in Library and Information Studies (MLIS)

This time last year, I had decided to take the leap and return to UCD School of Library Studies, after more years than I care to remember.

In ‘my day’ it was called DepLis, headed up by Professor Mary Burke - today, the Department is called SILS, with Professor Diane Sonnenwald at the helm.

I was taking up the opportunity to convert my Diploma in Library and Information Studies into an MLIS. Librarians such as myself who hold the old DipLis can now convert it into an MLIS. Attendance was part-time, one afternoon per week and consisted of completing two modules and the submission of a Capstone Project (thesis).

On my first day I arrived at the old library school department expecting my lecture to be there, only to find that it was in the Engineering Building. This was my first inkling that things were now very different. What used to be a class of a maximum of 39 was now over 90 students, a mix of full and part-time, conversion students and newbies.

I arrived breathless, nervous (and late!) into the huge lecture theatre, to be met by the wonderfully warm and enthusiastic lecturer, Kalpana Shankar. Kalpana’s lectures proved to be an absolute treat, engaging, thought provoking, bringing me gently back into the academic world after a long absence. Kalpana’s door was always open to any query, no matter how big or small and I found her enthusiasm for the course contagious.

The next semester with Norman Makoto Su‘s Research Methods II module was much more technical and analytical, and although initially very challenging, this module proved to be invaluable to the later capstone work. The Capstone Project is the core of the MLIS and I was very fortunate to be able to find a topic, Information Literacy, which matched my interests and work experience.

Throughout the Capstone Project, myself and my team colleagues were consistently met with encouragement, courtesy and enthusiasm from the library/information professional we met in the course of our research. Even when we finished and submitted, we were receiving emails from our contributors. The whole experience underlined for me what a strong and supportive community exists amongst librarians.

Returning to education is never easy, particularly when you are working, but from my personal experience, despite a few thrills and spills along the way, I’d heartily recommend it .

(This is a personal account, for more information on the MLIS please visit UCD's website.)

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Realising the opportunities of Digital Humanities Conference

Guest post by Jane Burns, Manager of Library Services at Children's University Hospital, Temple Street

Kicking off on Tuesday, October 23rd and running to Thursday October 25th 2012 this conference was jointly organized by the two major digital humanities national infrastructures (the DRI and the DHO), and the largest semantic web research Institute (DERI), together with a large-scale European digital infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities (DARIAH). The venues were in Croke Park in Dublin and at NUI Maynooth.

The goal of the event was to engage academia, industry, cultural institutions and public bodies to identify the key research challenges in digital humanities, and to further build the academic-industry partnerships that will enable adoption of digital humanities skills, technologies and tools. The impact of digital humanities technologies in the public sector demonstrating social benefit was explored in particular the project of digitization of the Irish census and the use of open linked public data.

The HEANet provided live streaming of the event so if you were unable to attend you can still view the fantastic presentation here.

I was only able to attend the conference on Tuesday and some of the highlights for me was when Sandra Collins, Director of the Digital Repository of Ireland, Royal Irish Academy announced the launch of the publication Digital archiving in Ireland: national survey of the humanities and social sciences authored by Aileen Carroll and Sharon Webb.

The speakers on the day were varied and interesting (see the program line up here). Curtis Wong, Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research who has 25 years experience in the field of Digital Humanities presented a series of online demonstrations of a number of projects undertaken at Microsoft including the use of Rich Interactive Narratives.

Jon Purday, Senior Communications Advisor Europeana gave a fascinating demonstration of all the resources available on the website but also highlighted the social networking access to Europeana via Facebook and Pinterest.

Fiona Ross, Director of the National Library of Ireland focused on the challenges involved in developing Digital Humanities. She gave a practical and thought provoking presentation. Fiona highlighted the different areas of research and the support the National Library provides to the research/third level sector. The National Library provided three bursaries to students in the Masters in Digital Humanities & Culture course at Trinity College Dublin and provided access to the Mary Martin Diary which was used to develop an online Digital Scholarly Edition. The original diary is held at the National Library of Ireland. The diary is searchable for specific people and places, and can be read chronologically, or by a specific entry.

As part of the program at the seminar there were a number of demonstrators and one project was the Mary Martin Diary.

The Diary of Mary Martin

A Family at War: Mary Martin’s Diary, 1 January – 25 May 1916 is an online scholarly edition of the Diary of Mary Martin, a widow and mother of twelve children, living in the affluent Dublin suburb of Monkstown. Mary wrote the diary to her son Charlie, a soldier with the Royal Dublin Fusiliers who went missing in action on the Salonika front, in the hope that one day he would return home and be able to read it. Set against the backdrop of the Easter Rising and the First World War, the diary chronicles the daily activities of Mary, her family, friends and relatives. 

I was part of the project team involved in the development of the on line Digital Scholarly Edition of the Diary. Other team members were Sineád Moloney, Rachel Murphy, Gordon O’Sullivan and Patrizia Rebulla. We were students enrolled in the MPhil in Digital Humanities and Culture and PhD in Digital Arts and Humanities (DAH) taught by Susan Schreibman, Trinity College Dublin, Spring 2012. The online edition is a fascinating source for anyone interested in Irish history, military history, women’s history and genealogy.  The Diary includes 132 diary entries that were recorded from January 1- May 25, 1916. Each of these entries has been transcribed and compiled into a searchable database.

The seminar was an exciting and interesting event to attend and participate in. The Digital Repository of Ireland staff did a fantastic job of planning, organizing and supporting the event. Colleagues who were lucky to attend the events of the conference yesterday and today have reported equally positive experiences.  

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Post-Publication Peer Review: Where are we at?

In recent times post-publication peer review (P3R) has come to mean many different things. If traditional peer-review represents a 'filter then publish' approach, P3R comes in two flavours: 'publish then filter' (primary P3R) or 'filter then publish then filter' where peer review still takes place prior to publication (secondary P3R). In the traditional print journal space, we think of P3R as the correspondence and letters that appear after articles are published. Within the health sciences and other disciplines, it can be scaled up to the comprehensive rigour of systematic reviews and meta-analyses. At the opposite extreme, in the fluidity of the digital world it has come to mean comments, discussion and filtering through various social media channels, or more formalised structures such as Faculty of 1000.

Who are the reviewers?

Photo: AJC1

This is where the concept of authoritative objective review starts to become separated from what is essentially just uncoordinated dialogue and discussion (and in many cases, noise). And yet, there is potentially great value in this conversation, just as there is in the private correspondence between two researchers. When research is published it represents the germination of an idea, and one which will ultimately be shaped and refined over time by both the original author and the wider research community. The difference with P3R compared to pre-publication review however, is that in theory anyone (in an open access environment at any rate) can self-appoint themselves as a reviewer. What does 'reviewer' even mean anymore?

You can't argue with Science, right?
In this context, opening up the review process may spark concerns over quality control; after all how do we know whose opinion we can trust? Of late, there have been several high profile examples of 'experts' doctoring data. This is why open data sharing and archiving is so important, so that results can be independently reproduced and validated (or not as the case may be). Indeed the idea of tracking replicability as a method of post-publication evaluation is the idea behind the Reproducability Initiative, launched recently by PLoS, figshare and the commercial enterprise ScienceExchange. But not every discipline or subject lends itself so easily to the scientific rigour of a lab, not to mention the costs that would be involved if every study were to be re-tested. This is why it makes sense to transfer part of the burden of review to a wider post-publication network in an open way.

Looking at LIS in particular, evidence summaries (critical appraisals of recently published research) are a regular feature in Evidence Based Library and Information Practice. Kloda et al. (2011)* find that these summaries often reveal more weaknesses than strengths, and building a culture of open public review in this way may help to improve the overall quality of research within the profession. P3R can also add value in other ways, for example by assessing the implications for practice rather than simply evaluating purely theoretical or methodological issues.

But whilst the research community in general may be interested in the value of P3R, are individual researchers? Several examples illustrate that article-commenting has generally failed to take hold in spite of many publishers' efforts to drive this activity online. Indeed, relying on this model alone, it is likely that a significant proportion of papers would attract no comments, reviews or discussion at all. At the moment there is no real incentive for individuals to contribute their time, even if it will benefit society as a whole.

Over time, traditional pre-publication peer review has proven itself to be relatively effective - even if inefficient - at what it is designed to do. Right now P3R can still play a valuable complementary role by supporting continuous dialogue and appraisal in an open way. Going forward, the structure and format of P3R can also be refined to help address some of its shortcomings (transparency; the authority of reviewers; incentive effects), for example by adding structured metadata to reviews or awarding some form of CPD credits to reviewers. Ultimately however, we all must share the responsibility to critically assess and evaluate what we read, and opening up access to this discussion - through whatever channel - can only be a good thing.

*Kloda, L.A., Koufogiannakis, D., & Mallan, K. Transferring evidence into practice: what evidence summaries of library and information studies research tell practitioners, 2011. In Information Research. (Published) [Journal Article (On-line/Unpaginated)].

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Guest Post: Irish Studies: Current Collections & Future Directions, DIAS, 12th October 2012

Guest post by Sarah Connolly, Information Officer, St Audoen's Church.

The one day conference on current Irish / Celtic collections and their resources was held recently at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, organised by Margaret Irons the librarian for the School of Celtic Studies. These are my thoughts on the day and the speakers…

Siobhán Fitzpatrick – As the Royal Academy Librarian and a former president of the LAI, Siobhán is a librarian ‘hero’ of mine. So it is always a pleasure to listen to her wealth of knowledge and insights, within the field and the Academy itself. Siobhán began what proved to be an inspiring paper, beginning with an overview of the Academy history and the collection. In a country with as rich and varied a history as ours, the Academy has managed through turbulent times to maintain, preserve, and illuminate earlier and current generations with its vast storehouse of material relating to the sciences and humanities. With the careful guardianship of Siobhán and her team, the collections are being catalogued, digitised and disseminated to a wider audience of scholars, local historians and family history enthusiasts. (Before I wax too lyrically, my interest was heightened by the prospect of the digitisation of the deeds of St. Anne’s Guild – one of the three long-term projects Siobhán wishes to address. This will be a huge addition to the corpus of knowledge for scholars focusing on the medieval history of Dublin.)

Ulrike Hogg – This paper gave us all an insight into the National Library of Scotland and it’s inception, collections and current resources and collaborations. The non law collection from the Advocates library (similar to the Kings Inns here in Dublin) was established in 1925. The Gaelic collection was of particular focus in this paper, and it is surprising or maybe not so surprising that there are similar issues with the collection, preservation and digitisation of the Gaelic material. Of interest were the insights provided on the Irish manuscripts within the collection.

Nicholas Carolan – ITMA and its exhaustive multimedia collection was the last of the morning papers, and this proved to be the junior of the group – only 25 years young as an archival collection. What became apparent through the paper, was the keen attention and stewardship of the archive, with great emphasis on keeping as technologically savvy as possible throughout it’s short but eventful presence. One phrase that struck me was the emphasis on the fact that ‘culture doesn’t recognise political borders’, and this archive encompasses the island of Ireland. As a resource for Irish Studies the music archive is an untapped fountain of knowledge and as Nicholas remarked is a ‘new frontier’ for scholarship.

Marie Boran – First speaker after the lunch break on a lovely sunny autumnal day in Dublin. This paper explored the special collections based at NUI Galway – an unknown territory for myself as I’ve not yet been fortunate to visit it. I was particularly taken with the Bairead collection, as it was from the first treasurer of the Gaelic League. Sometimes the ephemera of our various collections can provide much more information than the more formal printed material. I would imagine this collection would provide a greater depth of understanding for social historians for this period. The other highlight for me from this paper would be the OS map collection from 1838 onwards, particularly those that illustrate Ireland prior to the completion of the railways.

Gerard Long – The National Library of Ireland is a particular favourite of mine, and I’m sure of every reader who has entered its hallowed halls. So I welcomed this insightful and amusing tour through its history conducted by Gerard. From its beginnings as the library of the Royal Dublin Society to its current status as the premier library within Ireland. It was interesting to learn of the vagaries of Joly, Best and Hayes including along the way the realisation that in the 19th century collecting manuscripts was not high on the agenda for the library and it’s collection policy. The NLI is spearheading the use of social media within libraries/archives in Ireland, continuing to acquire new material and also has some superb digitisation projects in the pipeline – the Harry Clarke collection to name but one.

Deirdre Wildy – The final paper of the day was that on the JSTOR Ireland project completed in conjunction with Queen’s University Belfast. This was a thoroughly honest appraisal of how difficult and rewarding such a large-scale collaborative project can become. It was fascinating to learn how QUB approached and developed the project initially, and then proposed it to JSTOR with learning curves all round for both the University and JSTOR once they had reached the end. Deirdre’s honesty and her good humour throughout her delivery ensured that the audience were left in no doubt of how valuable this resource will be for current and future scholars.

In summation, a totally enjoyable panel of papers, and the breath and depth of knowledge explored throughout the day was inspiring. The library and archival collections within the sphere of Irish Studies is in robust health – yes there is funding, staffing and time constraints. But each of our colleagues illustrated their ability to effectively plan, resource and innovate within their core roles of preservation, digitisation and dissemination.

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Career Development #irelibchat - Weds 7th Nov 8-9pm

To celebrate the new LAI Career Development Group (#LAICDG), we will be running a special #irelibchat Twitter chat on career development issues on Wednesday November 7th at 8pm.

The Twitter chat will provide an opportunity to discuss issues surrounding employment and careers in LIS, and also for those interested in joining the new group to connect and introduce themselves informally and share ideas for future events and activities.

There is no formal agenda as such, but the topics below may help to generate some discussion. Just come along on the night and bring your ideas and your #irelibchat hashtag!

• Sources for finding job vacancies and advertisements
• Finding work experience and internship opportunities
• How easy is it to change sectors?
• Non-traditional and emerging roles for LIS professionals
• Opportunities for freelance work

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Guest Post: PASIG Conference, Dublin, October 2012

Guest post from Giada Gelli, MLIS, Assistant Librarian, The National Gallery of Ireland.

PASIG conference in Dublin: developments and issues in digital preservation and archiving

Last week I attended the three-day Preservation and Archiving Special Interest Group (PASIG) conference held at the Gresham Hotel in Dublin and organised in collaboration with UCD Library. I suspect there weren’t many librarians at it and I often felt out of my depth listening to the talks and presentations because I (as a librarian in a relatively small-scale art institution) was not the main target audience. However, this didn’t stop me from enjoying a very well organised three-day brain-picking event. I feel I have in fact expanded my horizons ‘big time’!

I’m not a great fan of stereotyped phrases, but I believe that thinking outside the box when we go about our professional development is both necessary and enriching. I chose to participate to the PASIG conference because its themes are so relevant and yet obscure to me: digital preservation and archiving. In the vast panorama of digital-related topics, digital preservation is THE area that needs to become crystal clear to all involved in the library and information sciences sector. Digital products have a limited shelf life and can quickly become obsolete, corrupted, unusable… in other words useless. Of course this is something that is presently more discussed in fields such as health, law, government, academic and research, where the preservation and security of data are crucial for the safeguarding of people’s privacy and the provision of core information services.

Nonetheless, even in less sensitive and relatively small-data driven fields such as the heritage and cultural ones, we should considerably care about the preservation and integrity of the data we produce, collect and care about - even the data we don’t care about right now, since we cannot anticipate the value that it might gain in the future.

This conference was a well-balanced showcase of advancements in the field of digital preservation, ongoing projects and solution-based approaches to the main issues faced by practitioners of digital archiving. These include long-term preservation issues, storage challenges, preservation of audio-visual media and best practices in archival workflows. Digital preservation is a key component of any archival workflow. It was agreed that it pays off to follow established best practices, use standard formats, prefer open source solutions to proprietary ones, opt for self-healing archival systems that don’t just store data, but systematically check and fix the data corruption that is bound to happen in time. One of the most interesting sessions was a point and counter-point discussion on cloud-based preservation solutions, and advice on cost modeling for archiving was also touched on.

Many academic institutions, mainly from the UK and US, presented projects and tools they have been working on, such as the London School of Economics’ Dice project; the University of Southampton IT Innovation Centre’s PrestoPrime consortium; the University of Oxford/JISC’s DaMaRo project. I found the talk by Thomas Ledoux of the Bibliotheque Nationale de France on their digital archiving model SPAR particularly relevant.

There was also an interesting mix of corporate vendors showcasing their dedication to archival preservation and exhibiting their ever-improved systems for digital archiving such as Tessella’s Preservica, Duraspace’s DuraCloud, Arkivum’s A-Stor and Oracle’s tiered storage solutions.

The main US and European stakeholders, such as the Digital Preservation Coalition, the Digital Preservation Network, the Open Planets Foundation, the UK Data Archive, the PrestoCentre foundation, together with our Irish representatives such as the Digital Repository of Ireland and the National Education and Research network HEAnet, were also there, engaging the audience in very informed and talks.

To say that it was a steep learning curve for me is an understatement. Every day I brought home with me some very funky words, which are so core to the digital preservation and archiving community: checksum, fixity, OAIS, obsolescence, Linear Tape Storage System, DROID, PRONOM. It is a fascinating and ever-changing area of study and practice which librarians should be massively involved in .

If you’re intrigued by all this and would like to know more in detail what was discussed at the conference, you can have a look at this Storify resource I compiled with all the #pasig and #pasig2012 tweets written over those three days. Many links to resources and projects were posted there so do check it out.

Maybe as librarians we don’t need to worry about how we validate the fixity of formats in the archival ecosystem (yet!), but we can certainly cultivate an awareness of digital preservation, starting from some library-oriented resources such as the Library of Congress’ Digital Preservation page or the Europeana Newspapers/LIBER presentation ‘Positioning libraries in the digital preservation landscape’.

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