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Publication When Samuel L Jackson played at the Gate, and other Irish theatre moments(Irish Times, 2019-11-09) Houlihan, Barry; Hugh LinehanThis article looks at the archive of neglected plays in modern Irish theatre history and considers thier position within the wider social and literary history of Irish drama, from Samuel L. Jackson performing at the Gate Theatre Dublin to mental illness on stage in 1950s Ireland.Publication Positioning the academic library within the institution: a literature review(Taylor & Francis, 2018-05-22) Cox, JohnA strong position in the institution is vital for any academic library and affects its recognition, resourcing, and prospects. Higher education institutions are experiencing radical change, driven by greater accountability, stronger competition, and increased internationalization. They prioritize student success, competitive research, and global reputation. This has significant implications for library strategy, space, structures, partnerships, and identity. Strategic responses include refocusing from collections to users, reorganizing teams and roles, developing partnerships, and demonstrating value. Emphasis on student success and researcher productivity has generated learning commons buildings, converged service models, research data management services, digital scholarship engagement, and rebranding as partners. Repositioning is challenging, with the library no longer perceived as the heart of the campus but institutional leadership often holding traditional perceptions of its role. This review discusses literature on how academic libraries have been adapting or might adapt, functionally, physically, strategically, and organizationally to position themselves effectively within the institution.Publication The Gate Theatre Digital Archive - Gate performance and digital history(Irish Society for Archives, 2018) Houlihan, BarryThe Gate Theatre Digital Archive at NUI Galway is fully digitised and available at the James Hardiman Library. Comprising 170,000 pages of manuscripts and printed materials, over 30,000 photos, over 600 hours of digitised video recordings and audio files, it is a vast resource for the study of one of Ireland s leading theatres which amounts to over nine terabytes of data. In this essay I will outline some key facets of the digital archive of the Gate Theatre at NUI Galway and how the archive can be utilised to leverage and uncover new understanding of the theatre s complex history, its many achievements and the potential of the archive to further critical studies of the Gate Theatre in international contexts. I will pay particular attention to the digitised video recordings of performance, which constitute an animated record and digital soundscape of acting and design on the Gate stage both in Dublin and abroad.Publication A landscape archive: methods for interaction design, preservation, access, and mapping—a case study(Taylor & Francis, 2017-11-07) Joy, Cillian; Keane, Aisling; Corrigan, PeterThe National University of Ireland, Galway (NUI Galway) acquired the archive of Tim Robinson in 2013. Robinson is a cartographer and writer who lived, studied, and documented the landscape surrounding Galway Bay over the course of 40 years. This article describes the methods taken for the digital preservation, access provision, discovery, and digital mapping of this landscape archive. It describes a user interface that allows exploration and discovery of the landscape archive on a digital map, linked to the archive, which allows the user to interact with the material from a perspective of place. The aim of this is to provide an enhanced user experience and create potential for teaching, research, and community engagement. The archive can also be accessed using more traditional hierarchical archival discovery interfaces and is selectively digitally preserved and accessible as a digital archive.Publication The ballad of the wild Ginger Man - J.P. Donleavy and Irish Theatre censorship(RTÉ, 2017-12-23) Houlihan, Barry; Jim CarrollJP Donleavy is best known for his novel The Ginger Man, but the problems with the stage adaptation of the novel in 1959 showed the cultural censorship at work in Ireland at that time. This paper explores the political and social context for the censorship of the stage adaptation of The Ginger ManPublication The Abbey Theatre Digital Archive: a digitization project with dramatic impact(United Kingdom Serials Group, 2017-11-08) Cox, JohnNational University of Ireland Galway digitized the archive of the Abbey Theatre between 2012 and 2015. This was the largest theatre archive digitization project worldwide and it has had a major impact on the University and its Library. The scale of the digitization project presented a series of challenges, including fragile material, limited time, streamlined workflows, complex digital rights management and effective systems. The project was completed on time and on budget in 2015, using a ‘more product, less process’ approach. Access to the Abbey Theatre Digital Archive has delivered strong academic impact for the University, generating new research income and international connections as well as contributing to improved institutional ranking. The Digital Archive enables new types of research, including text and data mining, and has reshaped undergraduate curricula. It has also had a transformative effect on the Library as leader of the project. The role of the archivist has changed and partnerships with the academic community have strengthened. A growing emphasis on digital publication has been a catalyst for a function- rather than subject-based organizational structure which promotes participation in digital scholarship initiatives, with archives and special collections occupying a new position of prominence.Publication James Hardiman - 19th century scholar and Mayo man(Clew Bay Heritage Centre, 2017-11) Boran, Marie[No abstract available]Publication New directions for academic libraries in research staffing: A case study at National University of Ireland Galway(Taylor & Francis, 2017-04-10) Cox, JohnNew research needs, global developments and local shifts in emphasis are demanding a broader range of interactions by librarians with researchers and are challenging previous staffing structures. Research has a higher institutional profile and academic libraries have responded by creating new roles and staffing models, with stronger linkage across campus as partners rather than supporters. Particular circumstances at National University of Ireland Galway have shaped its Library's staffing configuration for research. These include the emergence of digital scholarship across campus, opportunities offered by a new research building, the growing importance of archives and the publication of a new institutional strategy. Significant reductions in staffing and budget are influential too. Distinctive features in the revised staffing model are organization by function instead of subject, prioritization of engagement with digital scholarship, distributed management of archives and special collections, and a particular emphasis on contribution across multiple teams. This case study reports early gains and challenges.Publication Communicating new library roles to enable digital scholarship: a review article(Taylor & Francis, 2016-04-06) Cox, JohnAcademic libraries enable a wide range of digital scholarship activities, increasingly as a partner rather than as a service provider. Communicating that shift in role is challenging, not least as digital scholarship is a new field with many players whose activities on campus can be disjointed. The library's actual and potential contributions need to be broadcast to a diverse range of internal and external constituencies, primarily academic staff, university management, library colleagues and related project teams, often with different perspectives. Libraries have significant contributions to offer and a focused communications strategy is needed to embed libraries in digital scholarship and to create new perceptions of their role as enabling partners. Full text HTML PDFPublication The Abbey Theatre digitization project in NUI Galway(Taylor & Francis, 2015-12-17) Keane, Aisling; Bradley, Martin; |~|National University of Ireland, Galway and the Abbey Theatre finalized a partnership to digitize the archive of the Abbey Theatre in 2012. The partnership leverages NUI Galway’s position as a leader in theatre and digital humanities research and home to a range of theatre archives. The result of the project is the creation of a major international resource for teaching and research with Irish drama, literature, and history. The project addresses two particular challenges faced by the physical archive: preservation and access. It allows unprecedented levels of access to the archive which, until now, has been severely restricted due to space constraints and cataloguing backlogs. The archive contains more than a million pages, 500 hours of video and 2500 hours of audio. The material ranges from posters, programs, photographs, minute books to lighting plans, set and costume designs, sound cues, prompt scripts, and audio files.Publication ARAN opens Access to Research at NUI Galway(NUI Galway, 2011) Ryan, GwenDiscusses ARAN, NUI Galway's Open Access repository for scholarly literature.Publication Academic libraries in challenging times(2010-10) Cox, JohnThis article identifies three key challenges facing academic libraries in a period of recession: resourcing, technological change and proof of relevance. It proposes a series of strategies to maximise the value, actual and perceived, of academic libraries in challenging times. These are based on clarity of message, cultivation of partnerships, service leadership and performance optimisation. Although it is clear that the global recession has placed a major strain on resources, it is argued that there are real opportunities to enhance the relevance of academic libraries to the scholarly mission and to provide leadership through innovation, creativity and an outward-facing perspective. Collaboration on and beyond the campus is a recurring theme of the article and a joint approach to resource deployment and service development can pay dividends. A culture of opportunism, agility and flexible skills development will enable academic libraries to emerge stronger from the recession.Publication Sharing the pain, striving for gain(UK Serials Group, 2010-03) Cox, JohnIreland is experiencing a particularly severe and sudden economic downturn. Spending on higher education is under the microscope, with implications for university libraries. The impact of this new environment at National University of Ireland, Galway, in particular, is discussed and a range of challenges, opportunities and coping strategies explored in the context of staffing, information resources and operations. The national dimension is also covered, notably implications for the IReL (Irish Research eLibrary) service. Overall, a combination of pain and gain is identified, with resource losses balanced against opportunities for new thinking and models.Publication E-Books Challenges and Opportunities(D-Lib Magazine, 2004-10) Cox, JohnE-books are commonly perceived as offering great potential for learner support but also as struggling to compete with print due to poor on-screen presentation, restrictive licencing and limited range of titles offered. The experience of a group of Irish university libraries shows that, with the right combination of product and subjects, e-books can thrive among students and faculty, while librarians can create more dynamic, relevant and flexible collections than for print. Subscription management is demanding for libraries, however, and licencing issues remain highly problematic, representing a formidable obstacle to full exploitation.Publication Making sense of e-book usage data(The Acquisitions Librarian, 2007) Cox, JohnThis article provides an overview of the types of statistical data available for e-book usage and includes examples from specifc vendors, along with coverage of standards such as COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources). It describes ways in which usage data can be employed for purposes such as monitoring of e-book uptake and collection development. Limitations with regard to vendor usage statistics are highlighted, and the importance of supplementing them with surveys and other studies of user behavior is emphasized, with examples.Publication Reinvented, Re-imagined and Somehow Dislocated: The Evolution of Two John McGahern Short Stories(2008-09-03T16:03:03Z) Fahey, FergusThe John McGahern archive at The James Hardiman Library, National University of Ireland Galway includes drafts of all McGahern's works. The archive includes over twenty drafts of McGahern's story 'Christmas', while the essential narrative of the story remains the same many details in the earlier drafts of the story which correspond with McGahern's own biography are removed in later drafts, later versions of the story include the addition of details which serve to distance the story further from McGahern's own experience. During the course of the story's evolution McGahern experimented with a number of different styles. The origins of certain passages in the story 'The Recruiting Officer' can be traced back to McGahern's unpublished first novel 'The End or the Beginning of Love'. Other elements of the story can be traced back to a letter addressed to John McGahern from his friend and teaching colleague Tom Jordan.