UCD Library and Plugoo Chat

Image via Wikipedia

You may notice that there is a new plugin below called "Plugoo Chat". So what does this extra Plugin do, apart from take from your bandwidth you might say. Well Plugoo is effectively a chat client that is webbased. However it is web-based in that it is linked to your preferred IM client, in my case GTalk. So when I am logged into GTalk, I am also logged into Plugoo on this blog and persons/visitors can chat with me online about bits and pieces about the blog in real time. Pretty Neat huh?!

I cannot however claim full credit for finding out this software. Here is the strange/good part. UCD Library used Plugoo on its main page as a method of having a real-time online conversation with the Enquiries desk. It is a fantastic way of interacting, an otherwise boring run of the mill type website. As their Speil goes "UCD Library Instant Messaging Service: a pilot chat service is being offered by the Reader Services Department of UCD Library. Queries about library admission, borrowing, general reference and information etc... are welcome". UCD Library also have a SecondLIFE library in 2ndLife, as well as Facebook, (See here for the SiliconRepublic article on UCD's FB), RSS for updates to the Main site such as opening hours etc. There is also individual RSS Feeds for different themes and different disciplines which are kept relatively up to date. All it is missing is an interactive Twitter account and it would be just the Cherry on the Icing.

This is part of a trial which UCD Library has been undergoing in the last year trying different ways of interacting with students and potential users of the Library's services. Will be interesting to see what happens after the trial runs out. I do like the Plugoo chat feature on the main site and I have used it in the past for locating things. The staff are relatively on the ball all of the time on the Chat side of things which ensures it is not just an empty interactive Service.

Visit: UCD Library

Visit UCD Library 2.0

Liked it.

Nominate it.

Comments & Updates

Image via Wikipedia

Ok well I do have a reason for not posting as frequently as I have been for the last couple of months. Between family deaths, work and finishing off my Masters, life has been a bit chaotic for the last couple of months. The Masters however (thankfully at last!) currently is sapping most of my free time and my not-so-free time out of my life. However it is a thoroughly enjoyable feeling to have a lead weight around your neck with the pressure that writing a Masters level thesis comes with. NOT! If it was not for the help and support of friends and family I would possibly have gone completly mad at this stage.

So what has the Hedgehog been up to for the last number of weeks? Well he has been pretty busy in work and he has been busy thesising it. Whilst also enjoying looking out at the sunshine from inside the Office and the Library in UCD. Thoroughly enjoyable experience. This weekend however I did not get much of the work on the thesis done as I would like. Thankfully I am off some 6 days in a row next weekend so I am aiming to get an awful lot done over those 6 days. Hopefully the first full draft of the whole text. I will also have the tissues ready for when it comes back to me with the dreaded comment boxes on the side.

They are such an effective tool, comment boxes. Espicially in MS Word. Such a pleasurable visual experience to see a row of comments down the side of your hours of heart,sweat and tears of work as you realise 'Oh crap there is soo many holes in my argument I will never get this done. Arghh'. Comments are a great way of boosting confidence. However it is something which has to be done and endured. Personally I much prefer those comment boxes in MS Excel. These comment boxes lurk in the corner of the cells. All you see is a little red arrow in the top right hand corner of the box. Blink and you will miss it. Sometimes that is a good thing but er it does not help your Intellect much.

So hopefully the comment boxes will not be many when I get it back. If it is well I will worry about it then. It will involve trawling back through my reams of articles, books, electronic journal articles and finding even more appropriate content in order to expand my argument further. Once I have that appropriate content, I will then take note of the page number to make sure that I do not loose the reference for fear of being accused of plagraism. Following on from that I will double check to make sure I have the reference put in my Bibliography folder and then back that up 3 times-Hard disk, USB & GMAIL- for fear of loosing it and completly cracking up. Then I will continue to hammer out my argument and hope for the best. This all seemed like such a great idea last year and when all is said and done and when I do hand in the Thesis in September, it will all be worth it. Until then I will return to my sea of paper and concepts and hope for the best.

Liked it.

Nominate it.

Professor Martha Fineman: Vulnerability and Equality

Vulnerability and Equality
Public Lecture
Professor Martha Fineman
(Robert W Woodruff Professor of Law, Emory Law School)
Thursday July 3rd 2008 5pm
Room A003 Health Sciences Building, University
College Dublin

Hosted by UCD Equality Studies Centre, School of Social
Justice and the UCD School of Law
All Welcome
Martha Albertson Fineman is the newest Woodruff Professor, the highest honour Emory can
bestow on a faculty member. An internationally recognized law and society scholar, Fineman is
a leading authority on family law and feminist jurisprudence. Her Major books include The
AutonomyMyth:ATheory of Dependency, The New Press(2003) and The NeuteredMother, and
The Sexual Family and other Twentieth Century Tragedies, Routledge (1995). She is the author
of multiple articles in leading law and public policy journals.
www.ucd. ie/social justice

Liked it.

Nominate it.

Cartoons.

Via Laura's Bebo. :-)

Here ducky ducky

Whilst having lunch yesterday by the lake, I had some lovely company from a duck. Now I say company but what I really mean is the cheeky bugger was actually there to take the crumbs which had collected by my feet and I would have looked strange talking to a duck whilst reading my Irish Times-even more than usual that is :-).

IRELAND: DrinkAware's latest campaign

The DrinkAware people have a lovely new Ad Campaign geared towards those festival-lovers who always forget that one thing........Just curious though, within the pack that you apparently get via drinkaware.ie (I Can't find the link to the Festival Pack on their site), is the Toilet roll branded?...More curious than anything else, ya know Festival Goers....ya run out of toilet paper..."oh look, I'll use my drinkaware toiler roll"....*leaves rest to the imagination of others*

Free lecture on Swift and Gulliver’s Travels, Thursday 17 April

Free lecture on Swift and Gulliver’s Travels, Thursday 17 April at 1pm in the National Library’s seminar room.

Professor Andrew Carpenter of the School of English, Drama & Film, UCD will give a lecture on Gulliver’s Travels in celebration of the Dublin: One City One Book festival 2008. Admission is free and all are welcome to attend.

After the lecture, visitors can view rare Swift material from the National Library’s collections, translations of the novel and beautifully illustrated editions of Gulliver’s Travels.

For more details on this event, view this link to our website:

http://www.nli.ie/en/list/current-events.aspx?article=78702e1e-1882-4642-b6ae-2f8410c4bfd4

One O'Clock, Two o'clock, Three o'clock rock...

Some Genius decided this would be funny.......I tend to agree-a lil dated but funny nonetheless...





and I know I said no youtube this week but erm I figured this would be appropriate here....

UCD: Please Talk: Balloon Launch

The Please Talk campaign, which went national in the last couple of weeks let 1000 white Balloons fly into the sky this afternoon at 1pm. Please talk is a suicide-awareness campaign, which encourages people to talk to their friends about things which are troubling them. Some of the pictures from the Event are below.....I do hope however there was no Helicopters flying by at the time......

UCD LGBT Alternative Debs April 8th 2008

Championing Equality: Zappone & Gilligan in UCD

On Thursday evening, I had the delightful pleasure of helping to organise the Equality Society's Inaugural annual lecture with guest speakers, Katherine Zappone & Ann Louise Gilligan. I was going to be lazy and not post about this, but the beauty and love that I felt personally at this event was too much to ignore. I have been following the KALcase since it started in 2004, I even have the breakingnews.ie article on pdf from when it was first announced they would be seeking judicial review against the Revenue Commissioners. I was in the States at the time and remember feeling a sense of immense pride that something, anything was happening finally with my rights. I was only on the process of coming out, and having all those mid-phase hangups, but this happened around the October/November of 2004, and coupled with a number of other factors, I came out to the last of my mates in the Carolina Global Community in USC. I remember commenting at the time to a mate, that I didnt hold any faith in the Irish Judiciary in making a decision of this magnitude, thus far this has proven to be the case. We shall see how the Irish Supreme Court reacts when the case goes before it sometime this year or early next year.

However back to the event, Judy Walsh, chair, opened the talk by discussing the need for further societal acceptance for affective equality which set the tone nicely for the rest of the talk. Ann Lousie spoke first, describing Rawls second principle of Sameness to the gasps of some of us who are not necessarily in favour of Rawls Theories of Justice and his belief in the inherent selfishness of man. She then contrasted this with Iris Young's theory of Difference with this and used these two theories to describe the current debate about Gay Civil Marriage and whether it was assimilationist or not. Speaking about how Katherine and her met, she advised that in 1981 Boston College only had 2 PhD studentships available. Ann Louise got one. Katherine got the other. A Match that has lasted up to this day.

Katherine began to speak then, whilst Ann-Louise looked on, about the beginning of their work in Brittas, West Tallaght and the beginning of their community centre which operated out of their backyard from 1983 up until the late 1990s, when it moved to a purpose built building and was renamed 'An Cósan' and is still in operation providing second chance education in West Tallaght.

Then Ann Louise talked about their relationship and their decision to marry in 2003 in Canada. She described how it was a complete family occasion. To have their commitment to each other recognized civilly through the state, she acknowledged was a beautiful experience. She said that "Some people ask us, if it made a difference to our lives. I can honestly say that it has". Coming home from Canada, they did as all returning newly-weds did and registered their marriage with the state's institutions. And Revenue declined to accept their marriage due to the Oxford dictionary's definition of marriage being a heterosexual institution of "one man and one woman". Rightly they proceeded with a judicial review of their case, and as already outlined it is currently set to be heard sometime by the end of this year or early 2009.

The talk ended shortly after that, but not after they both instilled a sense of the love and Commitment which they feel for each other. Anybody who up to this point had doubted the motives of these two women, as just two lesbians looking for tax breaks, would be severly pushed to hold onto that stance by the end of this talk.

To say that this event has change my life, would be a lie. It has not. However It certainly is one of those events which shall be marked as an important facet of my life (take note you future biographers). I only hope that some day I will be able to enjoy a relationship of such commitment and love for even a brief amount of time.

Thank you.

A Marriage in Belfield.....

The sun shone brightly whilst the birds stayed reverently silent as they swam across the Belfield lake in a non-interrupted fashion. A crowd gathered around the steps of that lake as two brides to be prepared to take their vows, and quiet a big crowd at that. Some well wishers, Some curious onlookers, Some Secondary School children for good measure. In the words of Agnes Brown, a 'Beutiful daay faar a weddin'.

However, the point behind this mock wedding was to highlight the lack of recognition of same sex relationships. Minister, if you are reading, be warned All spectrums of society are behind the call for Gay Civil Marriage, the youths included.

Lesbian Mothers - Challenging or Copying Conventional Parenting?

Women’s Studies School of Social Justice Research Seminar Series

Resource Room (A201), WERRC,

Hannah Sheehy-Skeffington Building

21st Feb; 3.00pm-4.15pm

Hazel O’Brien, Women’s Studies, School of Social Justice, UCD

Lesbian Mothers - Challenging or Copying Conventional Parenting?

ALL WELCOME

Via Women's Studies.

UCD Rainbow Week: '30 Years of Gays on Campus'

Dublin: LESBIAN LIVES XV: 'Writing Lesbian Culture: Theories and Praxis'

==============
Just got this in an email this morning:
================

LESBIAN LIVES XV

'Writing Lesbian Culture: Theories and Praxis’

Women’s Studies,

School of Soical Justice,

UCDVenue - Hannah Sheehy Skeffington Building (HSS)UCD

- see campus map at http://www.ucd.ie/maps/index.html - the building is marked no. 44FRIDAY 15th FEBRUARY

The conference programme for lesbian Lives XV is now available at

https://www.eventznet.ie/ev/ac/womensstudies/lesbianlivesxv/

The social event for this conference is theLesbian Lives Party in association with Affinity @ Oslo Bar, Connolly Station.

Door Open 10pm, late bar- Dj Paris

€10 entry / men welcome as guests

Seachtain na Gaelige UCD stíl

Beidh seachtáin na Gaelige ar suíl i UCD an seachtain seo chugainn agus Chonaic mé an póstaer timpeall an campus inné. Mar sin agus mar tá suim agam ag labhairt an Gaelige agus an teanga a usúaid i mo saol laethúil, Cheapaim go raibh sé ceart, post beag á deanamh ar na cursaí a beidh ar súil. Mar sin ar dtús, beidh mé ag dul go dtí "An Liathróid" (Dé Ceadaoin, 8pm, Tripod, Sráid Fhearchair) mar cheapaim go mbeidh sé rud éigin eile difrúil a deanamh i mBAC do uair! (Bhuel ní maith liom dul go dtí an George gach seachtain. Níl sé rud deas i rith an ama.) Ar aon nós feach ar an póstaer thíos agus Bígí ag caint i do teanga. Fairis sin, beidh SNAG 2008 ar súil ar 3-18 Márta 2008 agus Gheobhaidh tú eolas ar www.snag.ie.

The Definite Description of Dublin Students

I have been looking for something to write up for today's entry. This is what I have come up with. Stereotypes perhaps but nonetheless quiet intriguing. :-)

------------------------------------------------------------------
The Definite Description of Dublin Students

A UCD, a DIT and a Trinity student were in an airplane that crashed. They're up in heaven,and God's sitting on the great white throne.

God addresses the UCD student first:"What do you believe in?"

The UCD Student replies,"Well,I believe in power to the little people.I think people should be able to make their own choices about things and that no one should ever be able to tell someone else what to do.I also believe in feeling people's pain."God thinks for a second "Okay,I can live with that.Come and sit at my left."

God then addresses the DIT student: "What do you believe in?"

The DIT student replies,"Well,I believe that the combustion engine is evil and that we need to save the world from CFCs and that if any more freon is used, the whole earth will become a greenhouse and we'll all die."God thinks for a second : "Okay,that sounds good.Come and sit at my right."

God then addresses the Trinity student: "What do u believe in"

The Trinity student replys "i believe u are in my chair".

Equal-L: 12th World Congress on Basic Income

The UCD School of Social Justice is co-sponsoring the 12th World
Congress on Basic Income, to be held at UCD on June 20-21, 2008. For
details and the call for papers, please visit

http://www.basicincomeireland.com/.

A copy of the call for papers is also attached to this email.

If you would like to contact me with any queries(john.baker@ucd.ie), please feel free to do so.

We very much hope that egalitarians from Ireland and abroad will take part
in the Congress and address themselves to the possible role of basic
income in promoting equality. We would particularly encourage civil society
organisations and activists to participate; contributions do not necessarily
have to be in the form of academic papers, as round tables and workshops
are also encouraged. Critical analyses of basic income are as welcome as
positive ones.

Details of a one-day lead-in conference on June 19, organised by CORI and
specifically concerned with the prospects of basic income in Ireland, will
also be circulated shortly.

Source: Equal-L

EQUAL-L: 16 Days of Action Against Violence Against Women

School of Social Justice, University College Dublin

Women's Education Research and Resource Centre (WERRC)

16 Days of Action Against Violence Against Women

As part of the International Sixteen Days Against Violence Against Women, WERRC, School of Social Justice UCD, will host a seminar with:

• Welcome and Chair - Ursula Barry, WERRC, School of Justice UCD

* Opening remarks - Mutale Kampuni , Women’s Aid

* Paula Fagan who will present findings of recent research on "The Experiences of domestic violence service providers providing services to migrant women in Ireland"

* Discussion

Date: Wednesday 28th November at 6.30pm

Venue: Hill Seminar Room, Humanities Institute UCD. The Humanities Institute is located beside Hannah Sheehy Skeffington Building where WERRC is located at the back of car-park five, Belfield, UCD.

Light refreshments will be served after the discussion

RSVP: Ursula.Barry@ucd.ie

Supporting LGBT Lives in Ireland: A Study of Mental Health and Well-Being

Supporting LGBT Lives in Ireland: A Study of Mental Health and Well-Being

www.LGBTlives.ie

GLEN in collaboration with BeLonG To Youth Project have commissioned researchers from Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin to conduct the first significant study of LGBT mental health and well-being in Ireland. The study is funded by the National Office for Suicide Prevention.

The aim is to identify risk and resilience factors for LGBT mental health and suicide and to develop a model of best practice for LGBT mental health promotion and suicide prevention in an Irish context.

The online survey component of the study will explore various aspects of LGBT people’s lives in Ireland such as school, work, coming out, use of health care services and mental health. The online survey will go live on Thursday 1^st November 2007 and will run for approximately two months.

For more information contact Odhrán Allen, Director of Mental Health Strategy at GLEN on 01-4730563 or odhranallen@glen.ie

Please add the link www.LGBTlives.ie to your sites.. If you have any queries on this research contact Odhrán Allen at the above number. Please circulate this information through your contact lists and members.