University College Dublin Library
UCD Library 'Leabharlann UCD | |
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Standort | Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland |
Branches | 5 |
Collection | |
Size | 1,300,000 print volumes |
Access and use | |
Population served | 24,000 |
Other information | |
Employees | 140 |
Website | www.ucd.ie/library |
UCD Library dates from the establishment of University College Dublin (UCD) as a constituent college of the National University of Ireland in 1908. It supports the learning, teaching and research needs of some 24,000 students and academic staff in a wide range of disciplines including agriculture [1], architecture [2], arts and humanities [3], business studies [4], engineering[5], law [6], medicine [7], science [8], social sciences [9] and veterinary medicine [10]. University College Dublin (UCD) is the Republic of Ireland's largest university, with over 1,300 faculty and 22,000 students. It is located in Dublin, capital of Ireland.
Buildings and locations
There are 5 UCD libraries: the James Joyce Library at Belfield is the administrative centre of the library system: it accommodates the central services and 85% of the stock; the Health Sciences library (for medicine, nursing and physiotherapy) is located in the UCD Health Sciences Centre at Belfield; Architecture (for architecture, landscape and planning) is in the Richview precinct at Belfield; Veterinary Medicine, located in the Veterinary Sciences Centre at Belfield; the UCD Michael Smurfit School of Business library [11] at the Blackrock Campus. Accommodation for readers consists of some 3,000 reading and study places, including some single and group study rooms. Almost all study places are wireless and power enabled. The James Joyce Library has a purpose-built assistive learning area for students with disabilities.
Information resources
The Library as a whole contains about 1,300,000 print volumes, with substantial collections in other print and non-print formats, including 400,000 e-books. Almost 80% of stock is on open access. Approximately 15,000 purchased monographs, and 2,500 donations or legal deposit items are added to stock each year, and 32,000 current journal titles and databases are available, the vast majority of which are e-journals. The Library is a European Documentation Centre, a national depository for United States government publications, and a legal deposit library for Irish publications. A small but significant holding of some 50,000 early printed books and special collections is housed in a separate bookstack with independent environmental control.
Library management system
Library routines and processes are fully computerised, using the Talis library management system.
Services
Lending (including self-service lending), document supply, information skills training, and reference and information services are available in all library locations. Periodicals, reference materials, official publications, theses, and special collections materials are not available for loan. A charge is made for interlibrary loan and document supply. The University Printing and Copying service provides copying facilities, on a self-service basis, in the libraries and in other University buildings. The James Joyce and Health Sciences libraries provide a laptop loan service. This service enables students and staff to borrow laptops on a short-term basis within the confines of the library. ref>Laptop loans</ref> The Short Loan collection in the James Joyce library uses RFID technology. This allows readers to borrow and return books without the assistance of library staff. Opening hours [12] in each of the five UCD libraries vary throughout the year, but during the academic session the James Joyce Library is open for 94 hours per week, including Saturdays and Sundays. Online access is provided on a 24/7 basis to an extensive range of databases, information services, electronic journals, and subject guides. Innovative resource discovery tools are being implemented to hyperlink citations and full-text (findit@UCDLibrary) [13], and to facilitate searching across a range of databases (crossearch@UCDLibrary) [14] A number of services based on Web 2.0 technologies are also provided. These include several blogs aimed at specific user groups or relating to specific service aspects; an instant messaging service, an embryonic service in the virtual world Second Life and a page on Facebook. More details of these are available from the library projects and pilots page [15] on the website.
Staffing
There are 103 full-time permanent staff of whom 33 are professionally qualified librarians. These are supplemented by a further 80 contract staff The Library provides leadership, and office space, for the Irish Virtual Library and Archive Project [16], the aim of which is to provide a researcher-oriented web interface to the digitised content of separate repositories in UCD Library[17], UCD Archives[18], and the UCD School of Irish, Celtic, Studies, Irish Folklore and Linguistics[19]. This is a five-year project (2004-2009) funded through the Programme for Research in Third-Level Institutions under the aegis of the UCD Humanities Institute of Ireland [20].
Liaison with other libraries and organizations
There is a strong collaborative ethos among the Irish university libraries, and UCD Library participates in a number of collaborative initiatives and projects. These include IReL [21] (the Irish e-Library, an initiative funded by the Higher Education Authority [22] and Science Foundation Ireland to provide a world-class portfolio of e-journals to support research), IRIS (a company which manages the IReL initiative and which also aims to provide a virtual union catalogue of the holdings of the Irish university libraries), ALCID [23] (a reciprocal access scheme for academic staff and postgraduate research students), ANLTC (the Academic and National Library Training Co-operative)[24], which provides a regular staff training and development programme), and the Open Access to Research Output Project, funded through the Higher Education Authority’s Strategic Innovation Fund [25] to provide e-repositories in each university, and a national portal, for open-access research publications. Internationally, the Library has participated in the past in a number of research projects funded through the European Commission's FRAMEWORK Programmes, and, as a member of the NEREUS Consortium [26], is currently participating in the NEEO (Network of European Economists Online) [27] project, funded by the eContentplus Programme, to establish a multilingual portal to the full-text research outputs of 500 top researchers in the partner institutions. UCD Library was a partner with the Library of the Queen’s University of Belfast in the PADDI (Planning Architecture Design Database Ireland) project and both libraries continue to jointly operate the PADDI Database service. UCD Library is an institutional member of SCONUL, CONUL[28], IATUL[29], IFLA and LIBER[30].
References
- ^ UCD School of Agriculture, Food Science & Veterinary Medicine
- ^ UCD School of Architecture, Landscape & Civil Engineering
- ^ UCD Arts, Celtic Studies and Human Sciences Programme Office
- ^ UCD College of Business and Law
- ^ UCD College of Engineering, Mathematical & Physical Sciences
- ^ UCD College of Business and Law
- ^ UCD School of Medicine & Medical Science
- ^ UCD Science Programme Office
- ^ UCD School of Sociology
- ^ UCD School of Agriculture, Food Science & Veterinary Medicine
- ^ UCD Michael Smurfit School of Business
- ^ UCD Library opening hours
- ^ findit@UCDLibrary
- ^ crossearch@UCDLibrary
- ^ UCD Library pilots and projects
- ^ Irish Virtual Library and Archive Project
- ^ Irish Virtual Library and Archive Project
- ^ UCD Archives
- ^ UCD School of Irish, Celtic, Studies, Irish Folklore and Linguistics
- ^ UCD Humanities Institute of Ireland
- ^ IReL
- ^ Higher Education Authority of Ireland
- ^ ALCID
- ^ ANLTC - the Academic and National Library Training Co-operative
- ^ Higher Education Authority of Ireland, Strategic innovation fund
- ^ NEREUS Consortium
- ^ NEEO
- ^ CONUL
- ^ IATUL
- ^ LIBER