Libraries of Dublin

The image above is of the cages for readers at Archbishop Marsh’s Library, still looking much as they did in 1701.  The skull adds a nice touch, don't you think?

Our recent trip to Ireland turned out to be something of a busman’s holiday for my librarian husband and me.  In Dublin, we made the obligatory trip to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells, but we also visited the National Library of Ireland, Archbishop Marsh’s Library, and the Chester Beatty Library; these three libraries, also in Dublin, are not a typical tourist destination (i.e., we saw no tour buses parked outside), but are well worth a visit even if you're not a librarian.  

The National Library of Ireland is housed in a stunning nineteenth-century building, one of the good things the English did for Ireland, as a guard told me.  The reading room is very handsome, but the collection is very much out of date, and the whole facility is in need of updating and sprucing up.  Not surprisingly, there are many sources, both print and online, for genealogical research.  In the ground-floor gallery, there was a major, comprehensive exhibit devoted to William Butler Yeats, one of Ireland’s greatest poets.  I wish I had had more time to devote to it. 

To be honest, I was a bit disappointed with Trinity College.  We waited in line about twenty minutes to buy tickets so that we could see the Book of Kells, which I hear is not bad compared to the waiting time in high season.  There is an exhibit in the space leading up to the case where the Book of Kells is displayed, but it was so crowded that it was difficult to see, let alone read, the signage.  The display case itself isn’t particularly well designed to facilitate traffic, and there was a huge cluster of people leaning over the Book of Kells; between the crowds and the (appropriately) low lighting, it was hard to see much.  Nor could I linger as long as I would have liked.  It was, however, a thrill to see the actual physical volume which embodies so much history. 

We then proceeded upstairs to the Long Room of the Trinity College Library, and were treated to a special exhibit on the history of the Old Library, which was founded in 1592 by charter of Queen Elizabeth.  Rare books and manuscripts that are significant to the development of the collection of the Old Library are on display, as are artifacts relating to the construction of the Library.  Most of the visitors didn’t linger over the display cases, so we had a chance to look around and talk to the very friendly guards, who were proud of the beautiful facility where they worked and happy to answer our questions.  For instance, we learned that starting in 1845, all of the Library’s porters (i.e., shelvers) had to take an oath before a magistrate that they would safeguard the collection.  The porters started out as cleaners in 1708, but in 1732, when the Library moved into its new building, the porters assumed new duties pulling books for readers, reshelving, and supervising readers who had to sit in certain designated areas in the Long Room.  At first, readers sat in bays between the windows, but eventually, large tables were installed in the middle of the Long Room, and this is where readers had to sit.  According to a regulation promulgated in 1842, only the porters were allowed to retrieve books for readers.  All of the readers had to be registered, and they too had to take an oath that they would handle the materials with care.   

Trinity College Library began to experience space issues fairly early in its history, and the problem was exacerbated when it became a legal depository library in 1801, a status it retains today; Trinity College receives a copy of every book printed in Ireland and the United Kingdom and it has the largest collection of any library in Ireland.  To deal with the space constraints, James Henthorn Todd (1805-1869), the visionary library director and respected scholar, devised what I think might be the earliest version of compact shelving of at least the earliest of which I am aware.  Todd removed the tables between the window bays in the Long Room and installed bookcases in the space; these bookcases were hinged and swung out on metal tracks, allowing storage of twice the books in the same space.  Some are still operational and in use today.  Another way space was conserved was shelving books by size, oversize books at the bottom, smallest books on top, just as is done today in mass book storage facilities.  Todd is known for several other accomplishments in addition to his ingenious shelving innovation.  It was he who turned Trinity College into a major research library and expanded readership beyond the College itself.  He appointed catalogers and asked foreign scholars to assist the catalogers in their work.  In fact, Todd considered his greatest achievement to be the printed catalog of the collection.  Librarians who visit Trinity College Library should be sure to visit the gift shop, which is full of library-related merchandise and has a robust online presence.

Archbishop Marsh’s Library was built in 1701 and was Ireland’s first public library.  Because the Library was founded by a clergyman, it is not surprising that its collection (about 25,000 books, most from the 16^th, 17^th, and 18^th centuries, and about 300 manuscripts) is very strong in religious works.  However, it also includes books on medicine, law, science, travel, navigation, mathematics, music, surveying, and classical literature, some printed by the earliest English printers.  During our visit, digitization projects were under way in a public area, and we also saw conservation work being done on the premises.  What was particularly fascinating was the Library’s appearance—it has barely changed in over 300 years.  To quote the Library’s brochure,

The interior of the Library, with its beautiful dark oak bookcases each with carved and lettered gables, topped by a mitre, and the three elegant wired alcoves or “cages” where the readers were locked with rare books, remains unchanged since it was built three hundred years ago.  It is a magnificent example of a seventeenth century scholars’ library.  Originally many of the books were chained.  Each book had a small metal clasp attached to a chain on the end of which was a ring, which ran on a wooden rod attached to each shelf. 

We were the only visitors and this meant we could take our time, linger over the nicely displayed special exhibit (Marvels of Science), and enjoy the peaceful surroundings.  Archbishop Marsh’s Library is near St. Patrick’s Cathedral and was used by Jonathan Swift when he was Dean of St. Patrick’s; he also served as governor of the Library.  Marsh’s Library has a small exhibit devoted to Swift, which features his death mask and other memorabilia, as well as first editions of A Tale of a Tub and Gulliver’s Travels, and complements what is on display at St. Patrick’s.

Finally, we visited the Chester Beatty Library, which is part of the Dublin Castle complex and housed in a renovated eighteenth-century building.  Beatty (1875-1968) was a wealthy American industrialist who moved to England and later settled in Ireland.  Beatty collected widely, including manuscripts, early printed books, icons, miniature paintings, stamps, and snuff bottles as well as other objets d’art.  Like J.P. Morgan, Beatty wanted to buy only the best, and had the money to do it.  I was particularly interested in the first-floor gallery devoted to the Art of the Book, which includes a large collection of Korans, Chinese jade books, which are extremely rare, Japanese scrolls, illuminated manuscripts ,and early printed books, as well as superlative Old Master prints.  The second-floor gallery is devoted to Sacred Traditions, and the focus is on religious books and manuscripts from most of the world’s major belief systems.   Everything was impeccably presented, with helpful labels in English and Gaelic that provide context and history for each object.  There is an attractive gift shop and a café that seemed very popular.  Visitors have money to spend because admission to the Chester Beatty Library is free.

For two librarians, Dublin provided a wealth of riches, much more than we had anticipated.  It also offered great theatre, good food, and stunning Georgia architecture to admire on our rambles.   

Blast from the Past

The best course I took at Columbia Library School was History of the Printed Book with Professor Terry Belanger. Starting with incunabula, Profesor Belanger took us through five and a half centuries of changes in how books were manufactured. The course covered more than the history of the book--Professor Belanger taught us social history, literary history (with an emphasis on British literature), the history of technology, art history, copyright, business history, all as reflected in the printed book, and made it fascinating. To this day, I check the back of a hardcover book to see what typeface it is printed in before I look at the title page or table of contents. Columbia closed its library school in 1992, and Professor Belanger, like the rest of the faculty, had to find a new home. He had founded the Rare Book School at Columbia in 1983, and moved it to the University of Virginia in 1992. The mission statement of the School comes from its homepage: "Rare Book School (RBS) provides continuing-education opportunities for students from all disciplines and levels to study the history of written, printed, and born digital materials with leading scholars and professionals in the field." In fulfillment of this mission, the Rare Book School offers courses on everything related to books and information from Introduction to Paleography to Born Digital Materials: Theory & Practice. The latter offering was recently brought to the attention of LIPA members through an email message. Professor Belanger recently retired from the position of director of the Rare Book School. His influence has been widespread. Most rare book librarians in the United States have taken at least one course at the Rare Book School.

The Chronicle of Higher Education, which unfortunately requires a subscription for access, profiles Professor Belanger in its December 11 issue.

The profile brought back fond memories of a favorite professor. One would think that a person who loves the printed book would recoil from technology, but that is not the case at all. Professor Belanger has embraced it wholeheartedly as yet another tool in his arsenal.

Both the euphoric embrace of digital technologies and the haze of nostalgia for the book have obscrued its technological nature, propagating the notion that the meeting between the book and the computer pits the pretechnological against the technological. Any triumph for one is viewed as a loss for the other. Without denying that digitization poses serious new challenges for the book, one can argue that that perspective is deeply flawed.

Few people are better prepared to explain why than Belanger, who has spent his career teaching others how to study the book as a physical object, as a form of technology, and as the product of many other technologies. It turns out that doing so has profound consequences. It has made Belanger receptive to the use of digital technologies in the study of the book and inspired his innovative approaches to collecting and teaching. It has also been the core insight behind the transformation that he and his students have brought to the field of rare books over the past several decades.

Belanger buys up cast-off books in bad condition so that he and his students can take them apart and look at their guts without remorse. He

despises the tendency of some of his colleagues in the world of rare books to allow their fondness for books to become an undiscriminating fetish of form over function. He calls that "pretty-book syndrome" and works hard to guard against it by emphasizing the prosaic aspects of working with rare books and playing down the spiritual satisfactions. As he likes to quip, "Librarianship is not all glamour."

Belanger believes that online databases and Google can help researchers to track down obscure information about books and authors, but is concerned that projects to digitize rare books pose risks. "Because so much information about a physical object is lost in photographic duplication, future students of the book will be a profound disadvantage if they can examine only digital reproductions. ... 'Each generation needs to rediscover the past in its own way, using its own improved technology for that purpose.'" Belanger thinks that not all books need to be preserved in their original format, and that digitized versions provide adequate access.

He believes that books do certain things well and digital technologies do other things well. The two should coexist without trying to eliminate each other. If an Audubon print is viewed in the original rather than in digital reproduction, that is no reason to maintain that information created digitally and intended for digital viewing would be improved by taking on physical dimensions.

I highly recommend this entertaining profile of a library pioneer.

New Life for Old Books

Cambridge University Press has announced a new digital initiative, according to an article in today's Inside Higher Ed. In a partnership with the Cambridge University Library, the Press, which has been operating since 1584, will scan and reprint original copies. The project, dubbed "Books of Enduring Scholarly Value," calls initially for scanning 475 volumes from the Cambridge University Library's rare book collection, and then for scanning an additional 1,000 books by the end of 2009. The books will be sold on demand for $15 to $25 per volume. The article reviews similar projects to digitize and sell on demand books from the University of Michigan and Cornell University library collections. Participants were asked whether the on-demand print programs would reduce the value of the physical library because potential users would no longer have to travel to use materials. They were unanimous in the opinion that accessibility was the most important consideration in digitizing their collections.