Feature Articles

A: The National Library of Ireland was established by the Dublin Science and Art Museum Act, 1877, which provided that the bulk of the collections in the possession of the Royal Dublin Society should be vested in the then Department of Science and Art for the benefit of the public and of the Society, and for the purposes of the Act. An Agreement of 1881 provided that the Library should operate under the superintendence of a Council of twelve Trustees, eight of whom were appointed by the Society and four by the Government; this Agreement also conferred on the Trustees the duty of appointing the officers of the Library. This historic arrangement ended with the establishment of the National Library of Ireland as a non-commercial semi-State cultural institution on 3 May 2005 under the National Cultural Institutions Act, 1997.

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Although the enabling act for the National Library was passed in 1877, it was not until 1885 that work began on a new building to house its collections. The new purpose-built Library was opened in 1890.

Over the years, the Library has extended into adjacent premises in Kildare Street. In 1989 a specially refurbished building on Kildare Street, formerly the Kildare Street Gentlemen's Club, was opened as the Manuscripts Department, Genealogical Office, and Heraldic Museum. This was followed in 1998 by the opening of another refurbished building in the Club's former racket hall as a Technical Services Facility, accommodating the conservation unit, the bindery, the microfilming and NEWSPLAN unit. In the same year the Library's photographic collections moved to the National Photographic Archive, a custom-built, award-winning building in Meeting House Square, the cultural section of Dublin's Temple Bar, about a half-mile from the main Library complex. The refurbishment of No. 4 Kildare Street was completed in 2003 to serve as a new administrative centre. In 2004, the refurbishment of a building adjoining the Kildare Street complex, the former National College of Art and Design, was completed to provide much needed additional space for reading rooms, storage facilities, an exhibition hall, a shop, and a café. The building development project continues, with the current phase involving the restoration of the façade of the 1890 building.

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Until the 1920s the Library aimed at being a library of universal knowledge. Since the growth of a comprehensive system of public, academic and special libraries in Ireland, the National Library has focused on developing its comprehensive collection of bibliographical material relating to Ireland, together with a supporting reference collection.

A: The Library's current collection of some six million items constitutes probably the most outstanding collection of Irish documentary material in the world, offering an invaluable representation of our history and heritage. Books, pamphlets, serials, newspapers, manuscripts, maps, photographs, official publications, prints, drawings, political memorabilia, music, literary correspondence and ephemera make up the bulk of the items. We continue to seek additional materials in these categories to add even greater depth and texture to our existing repository of information on Ireland's social, economic, political, religious and literary history.

The collection of Printed Books consists of nearly one million titles. The collections of the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) and the Joly Library formed the basis of its printed book collection on the establishment of the National Library of Ireland in 1877. Using the RDS Library and the Joly Library as a basis, the Library developed its collections to form a comprehensive archive of material relating to Ireland, together with a general collection appropriate for a National Library. As well as acquiring modern material, the Library continues to search for retrospective items of Irish interest. Material published in Ireland but not deposited at the time under the Copyright Act is also acquired retrospectively, where possible, through the antiquarian book trade.

Library collections concentrate on Irish history and society, including the Irish Diaspora.

A: The Library purchases books, both new and antiquarian, by Irish authors, or relating to Ireland published outside the Republic of Ireland. (As a legal deposit library, the Library is entitled to receive a copy of every publication published in the State).

A recent addition from YBP is "IRELAND EVER: THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF JILL FREEDMAN".

A: The National Library is Ireland's major public research library, established 'to collect, preserve and make accessible materials on or relating to Ireland, whether published in Ireland or abroad, and a supporting reference collection'. Frequently, the Library holds the only copy of particular material which is readily available to the public. The Library is open, free of charge, to all who want and need to use it. A Reader's Ticket is necessary in order to consult most categories of material.

In 1943 the Library took responsibility on behalf of the State for matters relating to heraldry in Ireland. The Office of the Chief Herald of Ireland, formerly the Office of the Ulster King of Arms, has functioned as part of the Library since that date.

While the books and manuscripts of the National Library in themselves constitute a heritage, their real significance lies in the information they provide on various aspects of Irish history and culture. Indeed the function of the National Library might perhaps be seen as maintaining the record of Ireland and its people, in so far as it has been documented in book, manuscript, map or illustration.

A: Users of the Library have a wide variety of interests. Included are those engaged in long-term research with a view to a book or article and those with a specific 'once-off' need. Family history researchers continue to constitute the single biggest user group in the Library.

Reader enquiries relate to various aspects of the Library's collections and services, with the printed book collections, newspapers, and genealogy collections used most prominently.

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A: YBP has been assisting the Library with the identification of newly published books with Irish content or Irish authorship.

We currently use the notification slip plan which delivers a customized notification slip wherever a newly published title is relevant to Irish studies. We also find the OP/OSI service useful for out-of-print titles.

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A: In June 2004 the National Library's new exhibition space was opened to the public. The inaugural exhibition James Joyce and Ulysses at the National Library of Ireland features highlights from the Library's collections relating not only to Joyce and Ulysses, but also to Dublin at the turn of the century. The exhibition area is part of a range of improved visitor facilities which include a seminar room, shop and café.

The next major exhibition opening, in 2006, will focus upon William Butler Yeats. The National Library is the world's largest repository of Yeats papers, a collection which is one of the most significant literary archives in the English-speaking world and was gifted to the Library by the poet's family in the period since his death in 1939. In addition, the entire personal library of William Butler Yeats, comprising more than 2,500 volumes, was generously donated to the Library by the poet's family in 2002.

A: I think that the challenges we face are common to many national libraries. Our mission statement states our aim is to collect, preserve and make accessible materials on or relating to Ireland'. Our greatest challenge is to balance preservation of our collections with access to them.

One of the priorities of the Library is to maximise the use of information technology in the interest of improving reader services and access to library collections.

The Library's Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC) provides electronic records for printed material, manuscripts, maps, photographs, prints, and drawings. Work is continuing on a retrospective conversion program to place all of our holdings records in electronic format. The Library aims to produce bibliographic records of a high standard with generous access points. In addition, the online catalogue contains thousands of digitized images from our photograph, print and drawing collections.

The Library is involved in many digitisation and microfilming projects. Currently, there are digitisation projects for the Library's Gaelic manuscripts and historic Ordnance Survey of Ireland maps. The National Library Microfilm Unit is involved in microfilming the Library's newspaper collections for the NEWSPLAN project, a co-operative preservation project for newspapers in Ireland and the United Kingdom. Another project involves microfilming of 18^th century material at the Library. According to the English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC), the Library holds more than 4,000 unique items.

A: The Library is located in Dublin city centre, adjacent to Leinster House (the seat of the Irish Dáil, or Parliament) and to the National Museum of Ireland.

The main Library building is monumental and showcases the richness of the Arts and Crafts movement in Ireland at the end of the 19^th century, in masonry, marble, mosaic, carved wood, metalwork, and stained glass. The stained-glass windows in the entrance hall show famous people in the worlds of literature and philosophy. The hall also has an attractive mosaic floor which greets the visitor with the emblem of an owl and the motto sapientia (wisdom). From here, readers ascend a wide, sweeping staircase to the impressive dome-shaped Reading Room on the first floor.

We are particularly pleased with the visitor response to our exhibition, James Joyce and Ulysses at the National Library of Ireland. Comments such as "The most incredible exhibition I have ever seen - amazing to see what technology can do to make a museum come alive" and "An unforgettable experience. Best museum exhibit I have ever seen of a writer" are their own reward.