The Hibernia College library and the team who runs it were recently shortlisted for the 2022 Education Awards Best Library Team. We want to take this opportunity to share a little about this incredible resource. The mandate of the Hibernia College library is to provide a high-quality library service to all users: students, staff and faculty. Read on to discover how we do this!
Digital Library Overview
Hibernia College students have access to an extensive digital library that is integrated into the virtual learning environment (VLE). It provides students with secure, direct access to all resources by means of a recently upgraded discovery search engine. We have a seamless link between recommended reading on our VLE to the full-text of those items in the library.
The College subscribes to an ever-increasing electronic resource collection that is regularly reviewed by the team and faculty members. As part of a recent major library update completed in 2020, we added thousands of scholarly open access items to the collection as well as VLeBooks, a subscription database that increased the range of e-books provided to users.
Meet the Library Team
The library operates within the scope of the Digital Learning Department (DLD) and is run by Digital Librarian Ann Byrne and Library Assistant Emberly Davey. Ann manages the collections and oversees the operation of a comprehensive online library and research facility. She works closely with students, faculty, staff and vendors to help ensure excellence in teaching, learning and research. Emberly helps to ensure that the day-to-day operations run smoothly and efficiently and assists with the maintenance and development of library systems, services and user support.
The primary responsibilities of the team are to:
- Manage and provide appropriate resources to support the research and learning needs of students, staff and faculty
- Support students, staff and faculty in their use of the library
- Monitor and report on the usage of the library and library resources
How We Support Students
With a student-focused approach at the heart of our library ethos, the library team offers continuous support to students. They prioritise a quick response time to student queries, run library competitions and issue regular library news updates to keep students engaged in a blended learning environment. The team communicates regularly about library developments and posts weekly to the library news section of the newly designed Library page on the College’s student portal, Hibernia College Home.
The team provides introductory library webinars to students at the beginning of their programme. As students engage in more research, the team offers advanced library webinars and dedicated workshops on academic referencing. In response to the transition from interview- to research-based dissertations, the team designed an advanced library skills webinar to support the needs of students and offered additional email and one-to-one Zoom meetings. They also provide a comprehensive series of guides to students, covering basic and advanced library searching, using resources and referencing.
Our Work with Other Libraries
Our library is embedded in a wider library landscape and frequently participates in knowledge exchange. The library team contributes as active members and is involved in the Higher Education Colleges Association (HECA) Libraries Committee and Library Association of Ireland (LAI) activities, such as the annual LAI/CILIP Joint Conference and LAI Health Sciences Library Group.
We encourage all our students, staff and faculty to take full advantage of our extensive library, its resources and the great support of the library team to succeed in their research.
