Friday, March 29

Trinity College Dublin starts a € 90 million project to relocate vulnerable books | Ireland


IIt is known as the “living room” of Ireland, where esteemed visitors such as the Queen, Joe Biden, Emmanuel Macron and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been taken to a glimpse of the “land of saints and scholars”.

Biden, vice president at the time, was so moved by the atmosphere in the dimly lit barrel vaulted room when he visited Trinity College Dublin (TCD) in 2016 that he returned a year later to gaze at the history of his former library. , known as the Long Room.

A page from the Book of Kells, considered one of the best treasures in Europe.
A page from the Book of Kells, considered one of the best treasures in Europe. Photography: Digital Resources and Imaging Services / Trinity College Dublin

But if you were to make a third visit, you may not be so lucky. Three hundred years after the foundation stone was laid, the 250,000 ancient books and manuscripts, including the lavishly decorated 9th-century Book of Kells, printed on vellum, paper, or silk will be moved one by one, along with another 500,000, to give step to the restoration of the building.

It is a monumental task that will take the better part of five years and will cost 90 million euros (75 million pounds sterling).

“Moving 750,000 vulnerable books is quite a company, so we have to test everything to see what is involved,” says TCD librarian and archivist Helen Shenton, who leads the daunting project that involves a team of 50 people.

Some of the books in the alcoves that line the 65-meter room are so delicate that they are tied together with cloth ties. The accumulation of exhaust gas particles from the roads surrounding the building can accelerate deterioration, while the human debris from almost 1 million annual visitors before the pandemic, ranging from the fibers of clothing and human hair, they reach 1 cm in parts.

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Each book should be examined, dusted, carefully vacuumed, and repaired if necessary. In a normal maintenance and upkeep cycle, “it only takes us five years to clean all the books,” Shenton explains.

Helen Shenton, University Librarian and Archivist in the Long Room.
Helen Shenton, University Librarian and Archivist in the Long Room. Photograph: Paul McErlane / The Guardian

The restoration project is currently in a two-year “enablement” phase due to the fragility of the books. It will determine the logistics of the move and the equivalent challenge of keeping the book collection open to visiting students and scholars.

The physical preservation of the books is the engine that drives the project. The recent fires at Notre Dame, the National Museum of Brazil, and the Mackintosh Building at the Glasgow School of Art have demonstrated the risks to historical and cultural buildings.

“We don’t want to join in with that litany,” says Shenton. “We need to preserve the building and the collection for its fourth century,” he said.

Vacuum the dust from the books.

Even the distinctive odor that many visitors, according to Shenton, comment on when they enter, is evidence of spoilage. According to a book in the Harry Cory Wright library, the sweet aroma is “the smell that comes from the aged cellulose on paper, similar to the smell of almonds, which contain the same chemical.”

Shenton says: “Books are organic artifacts and what you smell is deteriorated leather, deteriorated paper, and what we can do to stop that is to have better environmental conditions. Not only do we need temperature and humidity control, we also need to protect ourselves against particulate contamination that enters through the windows. ”

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Restoration has been on the cards for years, and the cataloging of each book was finally finished during the pandemic with a team of 50 working from home, completing what was a 40-year project.

Old Trinity Library Building.
Old Trinity Library Building. Photograph: Paul McErlane / The Guardian

To prepare the collection for study, Shenton is also creating the first online catalog of the Trinity collection. Each book will be equipped with a radio frequency identification (RFID) tag so that students can guide their readings from the comfort of their desks.

Once all the books have been removed, the library will close for about three years, during which time the building, according to plans by architects heneghan peng, will be completely renovated.

In what will come as a shock to many past visitors, the ground floor will be returned to the open gallery of the original building, which was designed to protect the books on the first floor from moisture.

Estelle Gittins, assistant librarian (manuscripts), looks for some of the material that will need to be moved.
Estelle Gittins, assistant librarian (manuscripts), looks for some of the material that will need to be moved. Photograph: Paul McErlane / The Guardian

At the same time, there will be “a completely reimagined exhibition” that will position treasures like the Book of Kells in an international context, exploring for example “what was happening on the Silk Road at the same time”.

And finally, the series of male-only busts, commented on by Meghan, found in each of the Long Room’s niches is also underway.

It was one of the first things Shenton noticed when he accepted the position and, following a contest, four new busts of four different artists will be commissioned, from the mathematician Ada Lovelace; the Abbey Theater co-founder, Lady Gregory; the writer Mary Wollstonecraft; Y Rosalind Franklin, the biophysicist who made critical contributions to the identification of the double helix structure of DNA and related RNA.

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