You are here: Home Page > Publications > An Leabharlann > Volume 14

An Leabharlann The Irish Library

Second Series, Volume 14, 1998

Volume 14, Number 3 & 4

Performance Evaluation In Irish Public Libraries
Antoinette Robinson
Providing statistical evidence - to our politicians, funders, opinion formers - of our usefulness requires that public libraries develop mechanisms for evaluating performance. This article outlines the background to and, in often full and immediately applicable detail, the practical use of performance evaluation in Irish libraries.

Making History: Wexford Public Libraries' contribution to the bicentennial commemorations of the Rebellion of 1798
Fionnuala Hanrahan
This paper outlines how library staff expertise created partnerships and harnessed a single, local studies, information collection to produce an educational programme which disseminated information about the Rebellion of 1798 and its interpretation using local radio, newspapers, and even shop-windows to provoke interest and satisfy curiosity. Elements of the programme are described. This paper is a re-working of a lecture delivered to local historians and the general public in Waterford city in November 1998, part of the Local Studies Collections of Public Libraries series.

The Collective Memory: Local Studies resources in the public libraries of the Republic of ireland
Liam Ronayne
This is a revised version of a public lecture given in conjunction with the Autumn Seminar of County & City Librarians, Waterford, November 1998.

Libraries and the Arts: the Portadown experience
Gerry Burns
This article reports on two recent projects which have demonstrated close co-operation between public libraries and the arts community.

Volume 14, Number 2

The Future of Professional Librarianship in Public Libraries
Jeffrey Glenn
This paper takes as its starting point Joe Hendry's paper "On a Fast Track or the Road to Nowhere" [LAR, July 1996] in which the LA President argues that libraries are in a decline which can be linked to the loss of authority, prestige and influence of senior librarians. He calls for the creation of a 'fast track' of management high-flyers with a background and education in librarianship. The present paper contrasts Mr. Hendry's vision with the reality of recent threats to the status of professional library posts, and Assistant Librarian posts in particular (with Northern Ireland providing the most graphic illustrations), and looks at reasons - many of them deeply imbedded in the structure, institutions and practices of the profession - why attempts to raise the standing of librarians faces such an uphill struggle.

Cathedral Libraries in Ireland
Harry Carson
"It is not altogether easy for a person, whose knowledge of a cathedral church has been gained by familiarity with any of the ancient cathedrals of England, to realise, when standing at the door of some humble, and perhaps common-place little country church in Ireland, that the insignificant building before him may possibly possess as just a claim to the proud title of a cathedral church as any of the stateliest of the ministers, which are the glory of England, or of the continent of Europe. Yet so it is, and the insignificance of the country cathedrals of Ireland, their inaccessibility in villages remote from railway stations, and the fact that many of them are buildings of no great age in a country where nearly every parish can boast of some object of remote antiquity, have combined to contribute to the general obscurity with which most of these churches are surrounded, and we have thus an explanation of how it is that such complete ignorance prevails as to them."

Establishing Archive Services in Waterford Corporation - the first phase
Mary Fitzpatrick
Waterford Corporation appointed an Archivist on contract in December 1995. This appointment is the first appointment to a local authority since the passage of the 1994 Local Government Act, placing statutory obligations on all local authorities to preserve and provide access to their records. Readers may benefit from an account of the progress of the project to date.

Irish Rural Libraries - Glimpses of the Past
Mícheál Ó hAodha
REPRINT: a printing error in Vol. 14 #1 resulted in an incomplete version.

Reviews:
Gerard Long (Ed.). Books beyond the Pale: aspects of the provincial book trade in Ireland before 1850 (Sean Phillips);

Joseph McDonnell. Five hundred years of the art of the book in Ireland, 1500 to the present (Dr. Máire Kennedy).

Volume 14, Number 1

CD-ROM - Introduction, Problems and Evaluation: A Practical Approach To Their Introduction and Development
Helen Fallon
This article is based on a conference paper delivered to the Annual Conference of the Assistant Librarians' Section of the LAI. Many of the audience were at the initial stages of developing CD-ROM applications in their libraries. Over the past ten years Dublin City University library has faced many of the issues and challenges public libraries are facing today. This paper provides the background against which decisions as to whether to purchase CD-ROMs are made. It then examines practical issues such as finance, management and promotion of CD-ROM databases. DCU's increasing use of the Internet as a gateway to commercial databases is also briefly explored.

Library Association of Ireland Policy Statement on Library Services to Children and Young People [Full text]

Irish Rural Libraries - Glimpses of the Past
Mícheál Ó hAodha
In Ireland, between the years 1915 and 1917, the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust commissioned two reports into the situation of rural libraries. The reports found that the rural district schemes instigated by the Trust had, for the most part, been a failure. Two men who worked tirelessly for the promotion of the library ideal, the (Abbey) playwright Lennox Robinson and a librarian from the Co-operative Reference Library, Cruise O'Brien, father of the present-day political commentator Conor Cruise O'Brien wrote these reports. Their observations give a fascinating and humorous insight into the social standing of public libraries in the Ireland of the early 1900's and are of much value from a socio-historic point of view. They give a glimpse of a pre-industrial Ireland, a country very much rooted in an old rural way of life, suffering quietly from the ravages inflicted by war and poverty yet poised to become a new republic with all its attendant opportunities and problems.

Reviews:
Patrick J. Byrne. Vanity Enough: the story of the origins and development of Newry Public Library 75 Blian ag fás 1922-1997: a history of the Donegal County Library (Agnes Neligan).