Lightning Talks - Thurs, February 11
Channel: AcademicSpecial Libraries
Date: 2016-03-03

Telling stories and engaging the public: experiments in online exhibitions at the Library of Trinity College Dublin, by Greg Sheaf & Estelle Gittins, TCD

Until recently, showcasing the vast collections of the Library of Trinity College Dublin involved exhibitions held in the College’s magnificent Long Room. Increasingly however, the Library has been making use of the digital realm as well as the physical one to highlight its treasures. The Library has digitised and made available to an online audience thousands of items using their Digital Collections repository, but there is still a need to emphasise particularly significant content and objects. This requires a means to tell narratives about them, and to use them to tell narratives, which exhibitions have traditionally fulfilled. This presentation highlights some of the avenues explored in the last seven years in using exhibits to tell stories online. It explores the move from the first faltering steps with converting PowerPoints, through commercially-produced Flash exhibitions, through to Lightbox, blogs and partnership with Google. TCD has moved from having no virtual exhibitions at all, to digital exhibitions uploaded after the physical exhibition is finished, to online exhibitions that complement or replace completely their physical equivalents. The move to virtual exhibitions brings its own concerns and rewards, and the opportunity for everyone to be their own curator of content.

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Smashing Student Stereotypes: The SLIP Ireland Venture, by Clare Murnane & Helena Byrne

Inspired by the conference theme of smashing stereotypes, the SLIP Ireland team highlight the recent contribution students have made to the Irish LIS community. SLIP Ireland (Students, Librarians & Information Professionals Ireland) is a group formed and run by postgraduate students studying library and information studies. This blog evolved from the need for more dialogue on all things theoretical and practical for students, librarians and other information professionals. This presentation will outline who they are, what they stand for and what to expect from this group over the coming year.