Thursday, January 29, 2015

EU Citizens Rights Exhibition on display in Ballinasloe Library.

The European Commission Representation in Ireland is launching a new exhibition on European Citizens' Rights entitled: "What does it mean to be a citizen of the European Union?".
Over twenty years ago the member states signed the treaty of Maastricht, which established EU citizenship. Any person who holds the nationality of an EU country is automatically also an EU citizen. EU citizenship is additional to and does not replace national citizenship.
Being an EU citizen guarantees you a number of rights which are relevant to your daily life. It also offers you various channels you can use to make yourself heard in Europe. European legislation guarantees such fundamental principles as freedom, the right to vote, as well as such practical issues as compensation for flight delays or lower phone tariffs when using your mobile phone abroad. The EU wants you to be aware of and to make full use of the rights you have as a European citizen every day.
This exhibition was originally produced by the European Commission Representation in Spain via the Regional Office in Barcelona and is being showcased in the several Europe Direct Information Centres around Ireland.

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Galway’s Library's 'Great Read Creative Writing competition 2014' - Winners

Here are the links to the winners 
Michael Gallagher, 8 Glenail Drive, Riverside, Galway was a joint winner of Galway’s Library's 'Great Read Creative Writing competition 2014'. Here is his entry, First light
The second joint winner was Pádraic Ó Giobúin Casla, Co na Gaillimhe. Here is his entry Dualgas Dhónaill,  (30 line verse)

The winners were announced at a World War I event in the Galway City Library in December  2014 and both received book vouchers for 100.00 and a collection of books sponsored by Kenny’s. They also read extracts from their works.


Wednesday, January 21, 2015

The Lord of the Rings Turns 60

Remembering the second best-selling novel in English
TolkienTolkien, a veteran of the western front, began LOTR in the interstices between the world wars, having enjoyed unexpected success with a juvenile novel called The Hobbit, published in 1937. As publishers will, his asked for a sequel. It took him nearly two decades to produce it. Tolkien, a scholar of Germanic and Celtic languages and medieval literature, had been assembling great mounds of work notes for an epic cycle, and he brought that considerable research to bear on what emerged—an amalgam of Icelandic sagas and Persian monster tales, wedding the Welsh Mabinogion to the Wagnerian Ring Cycle and the Kalevala and Beowulf, with dashes of Old Norse, Catholicism and William Morris–style fairy tales thrown in for leavening.
The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien’s great work of modern mythology, was forged by three wars. The first began 100 years ago, a hell of mud and fire. The second was its successor, a time of contending totalitarian visions. The third has in some respects never ended, pitting East against West, religion against religion.
As truly as it did George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Cold War most fully shaped Tolkien’s vision. But Tolkien also opposed two larger worlds that were not coextensive with the empires on either side of the meaningfully named Iron Curtain: the green agrarian world of the English countryside—the Shire—against the dark, satanic mills that lay always just over the horizon. It is clear which Tolkien preferred; his villains are the trolls and goblins who clear-cut forests and reduce mountains to deep holes in the ground, his heroes, the steady country people who stand firm against the dark overseers of mines and vast cities.
LOTR is famously a book of books, drawing on a vast library for background and inspiration; Tolkien even borrowed from his philological work for the Oxford English Dictionary to add details to the story, a compliment repaid when his coined word mithril entered the dictionary in 1976. But LOTR is also a book of friendship, and more particularly, the friendship—the fellowship—that evolves from service in war. The primary virtues are constancy and loyalty; it is always the dark armies that break and run, always the little men of the Shire who forget that they are afraid long enough to do the impossible, which is the very definition of heroism, and a particularly English view of it at that.
Tolkien stole time for the book whenever he could over the next two decades, and the result was massive: a manuscript of nearly 10,000 pages in several variations. Tolkien never intended it as a trilogy, but The Lord of the Rings was published in three parts all the same, broken down in order to keep the size and price manageable; the three parts were released in 1954 and 1955 in Britain and in the latter year in the United States. Taken together, it has gone on to be the second best-selling novel in English—not bad for a medieval allegory brought into our own time, and it’s one that, in book and film forms alike, continues to inspire.

Gregory McNamee is a contributing editor at
Kirkus Reviews.
 
Used with permission from Kirkus Reviews Online

Thursday, January 15, 2015

Contempo Quartet in Galway Libraries



Here are some upcoming programme events featuring The Galway Ensemble in Residence, The ConTempo Quartet.
 

 Free Admission. All welcome
 

Further events are scheduled during February and March in Ballinasloe and Clifden libraries.

Saturday, January 10, 2015

“Ballybane Library Exhibition- “Roma: One People-Many Lives”

“Ballybane Library is hosting an exhibition entitled “Roma: One People-Many Lives” from January 6th to January 30th. 
The exhibition may be viewed during library opening hours, Tuesday to Saturday 11am to 1pm and 2pm to 5pm.

Laurence Bond of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission said “ This exhibition creates a real opportunity to showcase positive images of Roma people living in Ireland. The reality for many Roma people living in Ireland is that they are marginalized and experience prejudice and stigma as well as barriers to accessing employment and services. Many also experience poverty and social deprivation. This exhibition provides an important space for Roma people to tell their story about living, working and studying in Ireland, where they have made their home, with hopes and dreams for themselves and their families like everyone else.”