A brief tour
There are pages about writing, career and life, the usual stuff. I especially enjoyed providing an overview of my writing, thinking about continuity and evolution. As I note, I hope to write more about social and institutional aspects of libraries in the future.
Lorcan’s posts
Lorcan’s posts
Lorcan’s posts
I have ported over the content from Lorcan Dempsey's Weblog, and say a little more about that below. Earlier manifestations will redirect to here, which is now where I will blog.
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Lorcan’s posts
Lorcan Dempsey's Weblog: Orweblog
Over many years, I accumulated a lot of content at this venue. Over one thousand nine hundred posts I discovered when we moved it. I am very proud of that achievement. Many posts are referenced and linked to in the literature and elsewhere. A variety of concepts was first introduced and explicated here, before being amplified in presentations, other writing and in my work generally. It stands as a record of many years of thinking and contribution.
Blogging has become much less frequent in recent years. In some ways, my trajectory has followed the trajectory of blogging generally, peaking some years ago. However, more recently, it has been interesting seeing the growth of Substack, Revue, Patreon and other manifestations of the independent creator trend, this time often accompanied by a revenue model.
I observed some blogging dynamics in this post a while ago:
Because I don’t blog all that often any more, I find that when I sit down to do an entry I have too much stuff to say. I end up writing a short article rather than a blog entry. Indeed, I have a couple of pieces that are lying around and have grown to several thousand words.
I do hope to recapture some of that blogging fluency here.
Lorcan’s posts
Some notes about the Lorcan Dempsey Weblog content on this site:
- To facilitate redirection and also to identify it here, I have given the imported content its own path .. /orweblog/{entry}. It can also be seen in the navigation the top of the page.
- I have also tagged some important or influential posts as '*Classics' to elevate them in the new site.
- I have mapped categories in the older blog to tags here, which have a more prominent role in navigation. The mapping isn't perfect, and I have lost some definition. But it works well.
- There will be occasional glitches with formatting, links, or missing images, but overall the transition has worked reasonably well once various issues were identified and addressed.
- I am grateful to Brian Pichman of libchalk (who host some OCLC blogs) for the patient and expert support he provided as we moved.
Lorcan’s posts 19 May 2020
The Poolbeg Towers
I have always felt a touch of nostalgia when visiting Lorcan Dempsey's weblog – nothing to do with the content, but rather the masthead of the webpage, which carries a panoramic photograph of his home city, Dublin, resting on Sandymount Strand in the foreground with its two Pigeon House towers and sweeping across the sea to Howth Head at the other side of Dublin Bay. // Rónán O’Beirne, Library and Information Research, Volume 39 Number 121, 2015.
Continuous with my blogging identity over so many years, I do carry over the twin towers at Poolbeg, an iconic Dublin landmark. These featured in the banner picture of Lorcan Dempsey's Weblog for many years, and are the feature picture of this post.
I am grateful to my son Eoghan for creating a mark for this blog which incorporates the towers.
Here is the picture from the original blog .. somewhat low resolution.
The towers have always been special, standing in the arc of the bay. At the foot of the South Great Wall, which stretches out into the sea. They look out over the city, the traffic of the port, and the emigrant ships. And in turn, they look back at the towers. In the time since we have left Dublin, they have become more pervasive as an icon and emblem of the city, despite also being threatened with demolition.
And as a special bonus here is Lisa Hannigan singing Snow. The towers are in the background.
Picture: I took the feature picture on Sandymount Strand in Dublin. Maybe I should find a better picture, but somehow the focus here seemed right. These are now much photographed.
