DUBLIN – The Long Room, with its imposing oak ceiling and two stories of shelves filled with some of Ireland’s oldest and most valuable books, is the oldest part of the library at Trinity College Dublin, in continuous use since since 1732.
But that remarkable record is about to be broken, as engineers, architects and conservation experts embark on a €90 million, or $95 million, program to restore and raise the bar. level of the old school library building, of which the Long Room is the main part.
The library, visited by millions of people each year, has been in need of repair for many years, but Fire 2019 at Notre Dame is an urgent reminder that it needs protection, according to those involved in the conservation effort.
Professor Veronica Campbell, who initiated the project, said: “We knew that the Old Library needed work because there was a problem with the building. “When we saw Notre Dame burn, we realized, ‘Oh my God, we need to do something now!’
Much of the effort will be focused on conserving the used wood that makes up much of the library’s interiors and window frames, as well as improving the fire resistance and environmental control measures needed to Protect your precious book collection.
Faced with the Notre Dame example and realizing that something similar could happen to an Irish national treasure, the government pledged €25 million, with the university and donors privately another 65 million euros.
Work began in April, and in October 2023, the doors of the Old Library will be closed to visitors for at least three years as it turns complete.
Meanwhile, visitors still flock to the library, Dublin’s second most popular foreign tourist attraction (topped by the Guinness brewery). Among the treasures considered is the Book of Kells – an exquisitely crafted ninth-century gospel that is the greatest surviving relic of Ireland’s golden age of early Christianity.
This month, Catalina Gomez, 50, a self-proclaimed bibliophile lover from Spain, stood staring at the vaulted ceiling of the Long Room, towering 48 feet above her, and her life. parade of graceful windows, arches and galleries with leather-bound books.
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“As soon as I walked in, I was amazed to see a space like this,” said Ms. Gomez, a legal official. “I’ve been to many old libraries around the world, but I’ve never seen anything as spectacular as that.”
She added, “It made me feel very emotional.”
Helen Shenton, the library director of Trinity, likes to highlight features of the Long Room that could have such an effect on visitors. Recently she stood at the door of a room and pointed at galleries and shelves slanting into a vanishing point, 213 feet away in the distance. “It is a beautiful prospect,” she said. “And that’s the front room of Ireland because every visiting head of state comes here.”
Ms. Shenton said she hosted Joseph R. Biden Jr twice at the library, first when he was vice president (“he went in 20 big black cars with Secret Service guys”). and the second time when he is a private citizen. again (“he just came down here alone”).
Many Irish fans of “Star Wars” also noted the strong similarities between Long Room and The Jedi . Archives, depicted in CGI in the movie “Attack of the Clones,” where a young Obi-Wan Kenobi searches for an elusive planetary system. Lucasfilm, which is not seeking any image rights, has denied any connection.
Ian Lumley, a heritage officer at An Taisce, an NGO that promotes the preservation of Ireland’s built culture, says that preserving the Old Library is crucial given its national popularity. its economy – and its long history.
“Back in the 18th century, Trinity was the university of the Irish Enlightenment, the alma mater of writers and thinkers like Edmund Burke, Oliver Goldsmith and Jonathan Swift,” he said.
“Those people will use that library the way modern students use new libraries,” he said. “The atmosphere and the books in the Long Room are so special that nothing can be lost.”
The conservation effort – informally named “The Great Decant” – began on April 1, when the first book, Volume 1 of Reeves’s “History of English Law,” was printed in London in the same year. 1869, replaced on shelf 1.1., in the upper gallery of the Long Room, which is closed to tourists. The book is dusted with a specially modified vacuum cleaner, it is measured, its physical condition recorded, and its details checked against the Long Room catalog, written in in 1872.
The book is then labeled with a radio-frequency identification tag and placed in a barcoded box – the first of more than 700,000 books, manuscripts, busts and other artifacts to be shipped. from the Old Library to a climate controlled place. – kerosene storage facilities.
When the books are gone, experts will go to work at the Long Room, upgrading visitor facilities, repairing damage, and fortifying defenses against four arch-enemies: time, humidity , pollution and fire.
The current fire department has relied on portable fire extinguishers.
Ms Shenton, the library’s director, said new technologies – which could involve misting systems, rather than water sprays – would aim to put out potential fires without too much damage to the books. A contractor is being sought to build a “fire room” – an exact model of the Long Room and its contents – to be burned so experts can study the best way to contain the fire. fire.
To slow the inevitable long-term decay of books and to protect them from dust and acid particles seeping in from city traffic, new microthin transparent covers, aka “sliding boxes” , is being designed for each episode.
“We would have to remove one book from each shelf to compensate for the extra thickness,” said John Gillis, Trinity’s head of book preservation. “Well, that’s what we negotiated with the librarians – one book per shelf. It could end up being two. ” He lowered his voice conspiratorially: “I’m a protector. Librarians are our enemies. We say, ‘Don’t touch that old book!’ and they wanted to let people open it and read it!”
The two reading rooms, hidden at either end of the Long Room, will be moved to the basement of the nearby state-of-the-art Ussher Library, and scholars will still be able to summon Long Room books from the off-campus archives. school.
To preserve the tourist experience for as long as possible – a major source of revenue for the university – the shelves that visitors see the most will be the last to be cleared. Kells books and other precious artefacts will be temporarily displayed in the school’s 18th-century Printing House until an enhanced exhibition space is ready in the upgraded Long Room.
There’s humidity there, says Ms. Shenton: The eastern half of Trinity’s campus was once a tidal marsh.
“The reason the Long Room was built on the first floor is because we have a lot of underground springs here and the groundwater level is high,” she said. “When we had to cut the cricket ground, we couldn’t do it at high tide because we were so close to sea level.”
Over the next few months, the only glimpse visitors get of The Great Decant will be a few figures hidden aloft in the Long Room’s gallery, books on boxing, making and air. Pylons.
Among the project’s assistants is Kayleigh Ferguson, 28, from Syracuse, NY, a qualified librarian who took the job as a side hustle while studying for a doctorate at Maynooth University, near Dublin.
When asked if she liked her new workplace, high in a picturesque gallery surrounded by fragrant old books, she laughed.
“I’m not complaining,” she said.
