Home to the UNESCO-recognized Book of Kells, the harp that is Ireland’s national symbol (not to mention recognizable to Guiness drinkers worldwide), a rare copy of the 1916 proclamation of the Irish republic, and other invaluable cultural treasures, Trinity College Dublin’s Old Library is one of the country’s foremost monuments, visited by hundreds of thousands of people each year. But it’s very much a living one, an active hub of scholarship and education at the heart of Ireland and the university community.
Completed nearly 300 years ago, the Old Library easily earns the first part of its name. Its collections may be timeless, but they are not impervious to the effects of time, and pollution from the active city around Trinity’s campus had seeped in, accumulating on the books. Meanwhile, the shock of devastating fires in recent years like that at Notre-Dame and the fear that centuries of history could be erased in minutes underscored the need for modern fire protection.
Through Trinity’s Old Library Redevelopment Project, 200,000 books have been “decanted” from the library to be carefully cleaned. At the same time, a state-of-the-art fire-suppression system is being installed, helping safeguard the library for decades to come.
A major grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) helped support this project, and SNF’s grant was kindly recognized with the inclusion of its name on the frieze in the Library’s Long Room, joining benefactors stretching back to the 17th century.
SNF’s support for Trinity builds on a long history of partnering with libraries to advance the multiplicity of essential roles they fill in society.
“We’ve partnered with libraries like the Bibliothèque Nationale de France to preserve cultural heritage and cultural treasures. We’ve partnered with the Library of Congress to support education for young citizens. We’ve partnered with the Gennadius Library in Athens to support a research environment that could exist nowhere else. We’ve supported the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library (SNFL) in New York to offer a beautiful, inspiring, and above all useful space to people at every stage of life,” SNF Programs Director Casey Russo.
“Trinity’s work, and by extension our support for this project, combines elements of all these different indispensable roles libraries fulfill, and more. Libraries like this represent the highest and best manifestation of what humanity can achieve together.”