events

…the Bealtaine Festival begins to look as attractive as camping in a muddy field and listening to loud music once did.
Bealtaine used to be described as a festival ‘celebrating creativity in older age’ – which implies you have to be more or less in older age to take part.
Now it is ‘celebrating creativity as we age!’ Well, we are all aging (some of us faster than others I admit) so that means everyone doesn’t it? Read more »

The 16th Annual Sir John T. Gilbert Commemorative Lecture, titled "Dublin after Dark: Glimpses of Life in an Early Modern City", and given by Maighréad Ní Mhurchadha, Local Historian, on Wednesday 23rd January 2013, in the Dublin City Library & Archive, Pearse Street, Dublin 2.

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Dublin Digital Day Event, Grafton Street, Friday, 8th March.

Create a digital memory, using your old photographs, on Digital Dublin Day, Friday 8th March. 

Do you have some old photographs of Dublin or Dubliners lying around at home? Perhaps a snapshot of friends meeting under Clery's Clock? Or photographs that show Dublin shops, pubs or other buildings in the background? Read more »

Dublin City Public Libraries continues its successful Career Direction & Development Programme of free lectures, workshops and help desks.  It begins on Thursday, January 31st, 2013 at 1.30pm with "Looking for Work? Learn the practicalities of accessing the hidden jobs market", a free talk and workshop with author and career management specialist, Rowan Manahan. Read more »

At a lecture on children’s literature some years ago, the speaker asked his audience to turn to the person on their right and tell them the story of Little Red Riding Hood. Most of us were getting along quite well – red hood - little girl on the way to her grandmothers’ house - don’t stray from the path -  big bad wolf.  As we got closer to the end of the story, hesitations and deviations began to creep in. Did the wolf eat the grandmother and the little girl? Were they rescued by the woodcutter/huntsman or did Little Red Riding Hood trick the wolf so that he ends up in the boiling pot on the fire – or was he cut open and filled with stones?

The reason for our confusion is of course that there are so many variants of the story. Based on folk tales and myths of werewolves which were common in France in the 16th and 17th centuries, the tale evolved through oral history, Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm to become a warning tale in a more sanitized form than the originals. Read more »

Dublin City Public Libraries welcomed the Tall Ships to Dublin with our nautical-themed 'Message in a Bottle 'competition and would like to thank all the children who entered. We had many great stories submitted in all our branch libraries and beyond. It was no easy job to choose the winners!

But winners we had, and we would like to extend our congratulations to the three overall winners, one from each age group. The winners were chosen by author Conor Kostick and each has received a family ticket for the Viking Splash Tour, and you can read the winning stories right here on this blog post!

The winners were: Read more »