DUBLIN — The Long Room, with its imposing oak ceiling and two-level bookshelves loaded with some of Ireland’s oldest and most valuable books, is the oldest part of the library in Trinity College Dublin, in constant use since 1732.
But that remarkable record is about to be shattered as engineers, architects and conservation experts embark on a $90 million or $95 million program to renovate the university’s old library building, of which the Long Room is the most important part. to be restored and upgraded.
The library, which is visited by as many as a million people every year, has been in need of repairs for years, but the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in 2019 was an urgent reminder that it needed to be protected, according to those involved in the conservation effort.
“We already knew that the old library needed work because of problems with the building,” says Prof. Veronica Campbell, initiator of the project. “When we saw Notre Dame burning, we realized, ‘Oh my God, we have to do something now!'”
Much of the effort will be focused on preserving the historic processed wood that makes up much of the library’s interior and window frames, as well as improving the fire protection and environmental controls needed to preserve the valuable book collection. to protect.
Facing the example of Notre Dame and realizing that something similar could happen to an Irish national treasure, the government pledged €25 million, with the college and private donors adding €65 million more.
Work started in April and in October 2023, the doors of the Old Library will close to visitors for at least three years while it is in full swing.
Meanwhile, visitors continue to flock to the library, Dublin’s second most popular attraction for foreign tourists (the Guinness brewery is the first). Among the treasures on display is the Book of Kells – a beautifully crafted ninth-century gospel that is the largest surviving remnant of Ireland’s early Christian golden age.
This month, Catalina Gomez, 50, a self-proclaimed bibliophile vacationing from Spain, stood gazing at the Long Room’s vaulted ceiling, towering 48 feet above her, and the parade of ornate windows, arcades, and galleries lined with leather-bound books .
Recent Problems on America’s College Campuses
“As soon as I walked in, I was amazed to see a space like this,” said Ms. Gomez, a legal officer. “I’ve been to many old libraries around the world, but I’ve never seen anything quite spectacular.”
She added: “It makes me very emotional.”
Helen Shenton, the library director at Trinity, likes to highlight the features of the Long Room that can have such an effect on visitors. She recently stood in the door of the room, pointing to the galleries and shelves that sloped into a vanishing point 65 yards away at the far end. “It’s such a beautiful perspective,” she said. “And it’s Ireland’s antechamber because every head of state that comes to visit comes here.”
Ms. Shenton said she’s Joseph R. Biden Jr. twice in the library, the first time when he was vice president (“he came in 20 big black cars with people from the secret service”) and the second time when he was a private person again (“he walked here alone down”).
Many Irish fans of “Star Wars” also note the strong resemblance between the Long Room and the Jedi archive, depicted in CGI in the film “Attack of the Clones”, where a young Obi-Wan Kenobi searched for an elusive planetary system. Lucasfilm, which had not applied for image rights, denied that there was any connection.
Ian Lumley, a heritage officer at An Taisce, a non-governmental organization promoting the preservation of Ireland’s built culture, said preserving the ancient library was critical given its international renown and storied history.
“In the 18th century, Trinity was the university of the Irish Enlightenment,” he said, an alma mater for writers and thinkers like Edmund Burke, Oliver Goldsmith and Jonathan Swift.
“Those people would have used that library the way modern students use the new libraries,” he said. “The atmosphere and books in the Long Room are so special that it is vital that nothing is lost.”
The conservation effort – informally called “The Great Decant” – began on April 1, when the first tome, Volume 1 of Reeves’ “History of English Law”, printed in London in 1869, was taken from its place on shelf 1.1., in the upper gallery of the Long Room, which is closed to tourists. The book was dusted with a specially adapted vacuum cleaner, it was measured, its physical condition was noted and details checked against the Long Room catalog, written in 1872.
The book was then labeled with a radio-frequency identification tag and placed in a bar-coded box — the first of more than 700,000 books, manuscripts, busts and other artifacts that will be moved from the old library to a climate-controlled, off-campus storage facility.
When all the books are gone, specialists go to work in the Long Room, improving visitor facilities, repairing damage and strengthening defenses against four ancient enemies: time, moisture, pollution and, most urgently, fire.
The current fire protection is based on hand extinguishers.
Ms. Shenton, the library director, said new technologies — possibly using water misting systems instead of sprinklers — would aim to suppress potential fires without causing too much damage to the books. A contractor is being sought to build a “burning chamber” – an exact model of the Long Room and its contents – to be ignited so that specialists can investigate how best to contain the flames.
To slow the inevitable long-term decay of the books and protect them from dust and acid particles that seep into city traffic, new micro-thin clear covers, or ‘slipcases’, are designed for each volume.
“We’ll have to remove one book from each shelf to make up for the extra thickness,” said Trinity chief curator John Gillis. ‘Well, that’s what we agreed with the librarians: one book per shelf. It could be two.” Conspirator, he lowered his voice: “I’m a curator. Librarians are our enemy. We say, “Don’t touch that old book!” and they want people to open it and read it!”
Two reading rooms, hidden on either side of the Long Room, will be moved to the basement of the modern Usher Library nearby, and scholars will still be able to recall Long Room books from off-campus storage.
To preserve the tourism experience for as long as possible — a major source of college revenue — the shelves most visible to visitors will be the last to be cleared. The Book of Kells and other priceless artifacts will be on temporary display in the college’s 18th-century print shop until an upgraded display space is completed under the upgraded Long Room.
There, Ms Shenton says, a lot of attention needs to be paid to moisture: the eastern half of Trinity campus was once a tidal swamp.
“The reason the Long Room was built on the first floor was because we have a lot of underground streams here and a high water table,” she said. “If we have to mow the cricket pitch, we can’t do it at high tide because we are so close to sea level.”
For the next few months, the only glimpse visitors to The Great Decant will see is a pair of shadowy figures high up in the Long Room gallery, taking books off the shelves, processing and boxing.
One of the project assistants is Kayleigh Ferguson, 28, of Syracuse, NY, a licensed librarian who took the job as a side job while studying for a PhD at Maynooth University, near Dublin.
When asked if she liked her new workplace, high in the picturesque gallery, surrounded by fragrant old books, she laughed.
“I’m not complaining,” she said.