Only in Ireland

Have just returned from a 2 day business trip to Ireland, Cork to be precise. It was my first visit to the lovely Emerald Isle, and there were lots of other firsts, including trying a glass of guiness (and liking it), being guided to Murphy's (which is Corks own better version of Guiness) which is very nice, and being driven in a peugeot 107 (interesting!).

As it was work, there wasn't much time for looking around, however, we did manage some time in the city, a few hours getting to know UCC - University College Cork, and its art gallery and libraries. There just so happened to be an exhibition on the book, which was very interesting and gave me some good ideas as to what we might do with some of our stock from the LRC... library!

Stayed in a lovely hotel, the Lancaster Lodge, which I'd really recommend.

The Irish colleagues that we met were very friendly and really interested in what we were doing at Edge Hill, and some of them had even heard of us. One of the presentations led by Dr Philip Cohen was titled Learning Spaces, and it was nice to see half way through, that photographs of the ground floor learning space in the LRC appeared, and Philip talked about what Edge Hill had achieved on a limited budget and how great it was - yeay!

Some of the Irish Institutes (which formed a consortia to purchase Innovative) were doing some great things using RSS feeds, and librarything to form tag clouds in the library catalogue. Definatley something to take away and consider for EHU.

It was interesting that the programme was varied and covered issues such as Information Literacy, Leadership in Libraries and Customer Service. There was also opportunity for colleagues to get together and discuss in facilitated sessions, which are usually the most useful sessions.

Colleagues were keen to learn more about how EHU is utilising the library catalogue to develop online reading lists which encompass digital articles and chapters, books, journals, electronic resources and even past exam papers.

One of the really good things to come out of the visit is that the IIUG (Irish Innovative User Group) and the EIUG (European Innovative User Group) have started to have discussion about a joint EIIUG meeting in 2009, which should host up to 200 delegates. As a committee member of EIUG, this is something that I'd really welcome, and i'm sure would be beneficial to all concerned.