New Tourism and Food Library Website

The New Cathal Brugha Street Library website is now live and can be accessed through the library pages on http://www.dit.ie/library/sites/. Simply scroll down to your library and click on the link.

The site is a work in progress and we will be constantly updating it to give you the most up to date information on any library related news or resources. At the moment you can access all the information you need to use the library, including information on dissertations, inter library loans, and what facilities we have available in the library. We also have a dedicated page for each school and we will be adding to these constantly. If you think that anything should be added to these pages please do let us know because this website is here for you. You can email the library on cbs.library@dit.ie, or drop in to us on the 3rd floor of the Cathal Brugha Street building.

MORE? there isn't any

No mas, thats it. it's over I'm done, am outta here. No more shall i post for tourism and food. Anyway things have not been the same since we became a college of arts and tourism

Gastro-intro-writus

I know we don't take the Guardian here and esp on Summer Saturdays but you will be able to access this "A Taste for words" online. It's almost as if it was written for our students interesting in food writing, culinary memoirs and gastrature (i made that 1 up) . It's an excellent artricle by Kathryn Hughes charting the growth and changing nature of food writing in the last 10 years or so and i'm gratified to find that most of the best ones mentioned: Fast food nation , In defence of food , Kitchen Confidential , Risotto with nettles , The settler's cookbook , Toast , British regional food , we would have in the library. Though ones we did miss and must try and get are "The Glasgow cookery book" published 100 years ago as the core text of the Glasgow College of Domestic Science, and "The Making of Mr Hai's daughter". The best writings in periodicals is to found in Gastronomica and Petits Propos Culinaires. though she laments the passing of Gourmet (and see post from 25th Nov 2008), partly due to the rise of food blogs.........

Intuative Intute

It's always been a case of The Good the bad and the ugly for students using the web for research. - who to trust who to blame, who to quote who to avoid. Intute (see post from april '08) is a UK based consortium of universities that provides useful info for students using the web. Amongst other things they have a whole range of subject tutorials in what they call their Virtual Training Suite. These tutorials have been around for a while but i see 5 of particular interest to us here: Health and Safety , Hospitality and Catering , Sport Leisure and Recreation and Travel and Tourism, have been updated and improved recently (11th June) and there is a brand new one on Food Safety. Something for everyone there. The tutorials have 4 main sections: TOUR - the best of the web for that subject, DISCOVER - how to find scholarly information, JUDGE - appropriate internet resources, SUCCESS - examples of students using the internet for research. You go throught them at your own pace and I'd recommend them.

I did something similar for DIT a couple of years ago called Making Information Work, which is available for all students on Webcourses

More visibility and open access for DIT research

Here is a very interesting development in open access, which will also raise the profile of DIT's research output.

RIAN, Ireland's new single-access national portal for open access to Irish research, is now live. RIAN is a compilation of content "harvested" from the institutional repositories of the major Irish third-level institutions. This includes contents of DIT's Arrow repository, which already carries the full texts of our postgraduate theses and research publications.

This repository-network should have a number of good impacts for DIT. Not only will it give us more access to the output of other Irish centres of learning, but it will also increase the visibility of the research done here. This will have the effect both of showcasing DITs research output and of making it more accessible to the larger research community. An increased citation count for DIT sources is therefore also to be expected. RIAN also includes an impressive statistical analysis of the output of the 8 institutions attached to it.

Http://www.rian.ie

coupe de monde

in case you hadn't noticed, and many people are trying, the (football) World Cup 2010 starts in S.Africa on friday. It got me thinking, seeing as we run BA/BSc. courses here on Event Management and Leisure management just what we might have in the library of interest and relevance. Sure enought plenty of books on festival sport and event management and more specifically on the business and management of sporting events including the very recently published Managing football, an international perspective. Lots also on those other areas of sporting concern, - exercising, nutrition, ethics, doping, psychology, etc. And of course there's loads of articles when you start looking in the databases like Business Source Premier and Hospitality and Tourism Index. And interestingly we have full text e-access to a journal called "Soccer and Society". The whole of the Jan 2010 issue was devoted to the world cup in south Africa with articles on its political implications, the social aspects, corruption in the game, gender, apartheid and more.

Unfortunately none made the research decision of choosing a winner any easier. Italy are a temping good value price at 16/1 but i think i'll go for Argentina at a best price 13/2

your mother should know

Don't eat breakfast cereals that change the colour of the milk" Just 1 of many Confucius type sayings from Michael Pollan's new book Food rules - an eater's manual It was the subject of a large feature in the Times Health supplement yesterday (that's where the photo comes from) and an Opinion piece today. Other pearls of wisdom include "It's not food if it's called by the same name in every country" (think big mac) and this Jewish Italian saying "The whiter the bread the sonner you'll be dead." Pollan is a well respected and influencial food writer - the Irish food critic John McKenna praises Pollan's book The Omnivore's dilemma as "the most important food book of the last 20 years" - so go borrow it now. Also quoted in the article is the DIT lecturer in human nutrition Dr. Daniel McCartney.

So "eat when you're hungry, not when you are bored" or as they say in Japan "hara hachi bu."

exams music drink and rehab

You can tell the exams are here - the weather is too good. So no harm in a bit of light relief. In the same issue of Food and Wine as featured Conrad (see post from 18th May) is a highly unscientific but probably well researched piece on what drinks go best with different pieces of music. So what is it that has you reaching for the neat vodka, by the neck, for the Sex Pistols and a saccharine alcopop for Lady GaGa. Is it mood, place, taste, culture? At one time or another we've all been driven mad by piped mall musaz and there is a whole school of psychology based round backround music, tempo and volume, and shopping habits. But this is the quality end of the spectrum they're talking: the hint of pencil shavings guff, the flavours of deep black cherry with the slightest nuance of clean earth stuff.

So it's single malt for Miles Davis Kind of Blue, a Bollinger Champagne to accompany Mozart violin concerto 3, a Grand Marnier, on the rocks of course, for Suzanne by Leonard Cohen and a Bloody Mary, what else, for Rehab by the inimitable Amy. Though i don't think that's what she has in hand in the photo above.