DUBLIN, IRELAND 2008 - Second Circular
Dear Colleagues
Thank you for your responses to the first circular. Herewith more information about the 2008 Symposia!
Conference Summary
| Monday 1st September | SPPC registration (Kildare St) 4-5PM |
| Tuesday 2nd September | SPPC papers (GSI) SVPCA registration (Kildare St) 4-5PM Evening icebreaker reception |
| Wednesday 3rd September | SVPCA papers (Kildare St) Evening reception |
| Thursday 4th September | SVPCA papers (Kildare St) Evening reception/SVPCA auction |
| Friday 5th September | SVPCA papers (Kildare St) Annual Symposium dinner |
| Saturday 6th September | Field Trip(s) |
Kildare St = Archaeology Museum
GSI = Geological Survey of Ireland
Registration
The registration fees for the 2008 Symposia are as follows:
| SPPC only: | €15 (12 GBP) [half price for students] |
| SVPCA only: | €50 (40 GBP) [half price for students] |
| Both Symposia: | €60 (47 GBP) [half price for students] |
| Annual Symposium Dinner | €30 (24 GBP) |
Payment should be by cheque or via Bank Transfer/BACS (either Euro or Sterling). Cheques should be made payable to 'Geological Curators' Group/SVCPA 2008' and mailed to:
Dr. Matthew Parkes, SVPCA 2008, Natural History, National Museum of Ireland, Merrion St Dublin 2, Ireland
For electronic bank account details, please email Matthew Parkes (mparkes@museum.ie)
When you have mailed your cheque, please also indicate your completed registration for the 2008 Symposia by email to Gareth Dyke (gareth.dyke@ucd.ie). Please also indicate your preference for one of the conference field trip excursions (if applicable). This information can of course be all in the same email in which you send your abstract submission and will be used to build circulation lists for subsequent circulars.
** Please note that all payments must be received before end-July 2008 **
Paper and Poster Invitation
Offers of papers are now welcome for both oral and poster presentations at both SPPC and SVPCA. Please submit an abstract (in English) of no more than 200 words as an rft attachment (or pasted into the body of an email) to gareth.dyke@ucd.ie no later than Friday June 18th. The abstract should indicate which meeting it is for, and whether it is preferred as the basis for an oral or a poster presentation. Relevant references should be placed at the end of the abstract, but please do not include figures or footnotes.
Abstracts
Abstracts should take the following form (as in 2006 and 2007):
Authors
Contact details (addresses and e-mail)
Title
Main Text (no more than 200 words)
References (full journal titles - no abbreviations)
Formatted examples of abstracts from 2007 are available for download (as a PDF) at: ../2007_glasgow/abstracts.pdf.
We will review submitted abstracts and correct formatting problems. Note that some presentations intended for oral presentation may be reassigned as posters. Such a decision will be made on the basis of the abstract by the organisers. If such an issue arises, the author(s) concerned will be notified before the end of June. All accepted abstracts will be included in a 2008 Abstracts Volume within the registration pack and will be posted on the conference website at the end of June.
SPPC Workshops
Offers of additional workshops/small group meetings to form part of the annual SPPC meeting should also be made before Friday June 18th (gareth.dyke@ucd.ie). Guided tours of the NMI Natural History collections facilities and conservation unit will be arranged for Tuesday Sept. 2nd.
Venues and Access
This year the Symposia are hosted jointly by University College Dublin (UCD) and the Natural History Division of the National Museum of Ireland (NMINH) through their collaborative program 'Collections-based Biology in Dublin' (CoBiD) (www.ucd.ie/cobid).
Main Venue
The main venue for the SVPCA meeting and the registration venue for both Symposia is the National Museum of Ireland's Archaeology and History Museum located on Kildare Street, Dublin 2 (http://www.museum.ie/archaeology/findus.asp).
SPPC
Presentations and posters associated with the SPPC will be held in the headquarters of the Geological Survey of Ireland (GSI) located in the Beggars Bush complex, Haddington Road (http://www.gsi.ie/Contact+Us/Visiting+GSI.htm).
The Beggars Bush complex also houses the Museum's Natural History research collections (inc. palaeontological and geological specimens). Access to these collections (mparkes@museum.ie), as well as to those housed in the Geology Museum of Trinity College Dublin (wysjcknp@tcd.ie), will be available throughout the meeting. Please make contact well in advance of this meeting to ensure availability of specimens and space. Guided tours of the National Museum of Ireland's beautiful Natural History Museum (currently closed to the public) will be available throughout the Symposia.
All venues are very close together: a short walk from one another across the beautiful Georgian southside of Dublin City. This area of Dublin city is 30 minutes from Dublin Airport (http://www.dublinairport.com/index.asp) by taxi, 40-50 minutes by city bus (routes 747 and 748 to the city from the airport; http://www.dublinbus.ie/home/) or using the aircoach service (to Trinity College or Kildare Street; http://www.aircoach.ie/).
Accommodation
More than 40 hotels, B & Bs and hostels are located in the near vicinity of the Kildare Street Museum. For links to these, we recommend:
- http://dublin.city-centre-hotels.com/dublin-hotels-map.html(for information, the main Symposia venue, the Kildare Street Museum is opposite number 41 on the map linked above).
- www.visitdublin.com/accommodation/
- www.dublintourist.com/
The following sites are also recommended for more general tourist and travel information :
Receptions and events
A series of three evening receptions including the annual SVPCA charity auction will take place during the week. The specific details of times and venues for each night will be sent out in the 3rd Circular. Rooms in a local pub (Dublin 2) have been reserved for the duration of the meetings to provide a cosy socialising and meeting venue in keeping with Irish tradition. This space will be accessed by brandishing your conference badge.
Field Trips
We are offering three options for field excursions on Saturday 6th September that (depending on demand) may not all take place (the price of one trip is included in your conference registration, should you wish to attend):
- Royal Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin (www.botanicgardens.ie). One of Dublin's oldest visitor attractions, the RBG is sited in one of the leafier suburbs of the city. See Victorian glasshouses and learn about plants that would have been eaten by the dinosaurs!
- Castlecomer Discovery Park (www.discoverypark.ie). Located about one hour from Dublin, close to the town of Kilkenny this is a new visitors centre based around Carboniferous coal seams that were located in this area of Ireland. The Castlecomer site is well-known for well-preserved fossil amphibians and plants, reconstructed in the visitor centre (many of the actual fossils from this site are in collections in Dublin). The centre also has a good restaurant and craft village as well as forest walks and fishing lakes.
- Ballybetagh Bog Giant Deer locality. Naturally, the National Museum of Ireland houses the largest collection of Giant Deer (Megaloceros) in the world. This is your chance to see, first-hand, one of the key localities that have yielded remains of these colossal ungulates! Ballybetagh is close to the ancient Irish monastic site of Glendalough (the 'glen of the two lakes'; http://wicklow.com/glendalough) deep in the Wicklow Mountains (Dublin's 'fairy hills'). Glendalough also boasts spectacular scenery, a visitor centre, a hotel (for food), ancient monastic ruins and tourist shops. If time permits, this trip will also stop at the site of the famed Georgian 'hell-fire club', on the fringes of the Wicklow Mountains.
SVPCA Charity Auction
The annual SVPCA charity auction in aid of the Jones-Fenleigh Memorial Fund will take place on the evening of Thursday 4th Sept. Please consider supporting this event in the traditional manner (by donating books, offprints, casts, models, reconstructions, etc etc) and by attending with your cash and chequebook on the day!
For more information on the background to this Fund, visit: ../../jones-fenleigh.php
The Jones-Fenleigh Memorial Fund
This year, the fund will award four grants (covering registration fees, accommodation costs and basic subsistence) to assist delegates with no institutional financial support to attend the SVPCA in Dublin.
Applications should be sent to gareth.dyke@ucd.ie before Friday June 18th, 2008. They should include:
- an abstract (see above for abstract formatting guidelines);
- a covering letter explaining your circumstances and need;
- and (where appropriate) a letter from your employer/institution supporting your application and including an assurance that you will not be financially supported by them.
Selection of the four successful candidates will be made on the basis of the relevance, originality and general quality of the abstract. Successful applicants will be notified before the end of June.
Any questions/comments at this stage? Please don't hesitate to email (gareth.dyke@ucd.ie)
We look forward to welcoming you in Dublin in September!
Gareth Dyke (UCD), Nigel Monaghan and Matthew Parkes (NMINH)
