colleagues see it we'll talk about the book of kells and many other passions the other weather cooperated that you could come here instead of just coming for us to come to your studio because this way we can invite all of your guests into our libraries so we are right now in the what we call the irish room at the john jay burns library i boston college the burns library as you well know is our of our library on capice where we have our rare books and manuscripts campus we have lots of programs and we're glad to add people to our mailing list and to invite them to our programs and then to learn more about our collections think people might not know that it's a public please still think we should tell it is and it's in two ways so as mentioning we have lots of events like in a couple of weeks we're going to be hosting a group from strokes town park which is the national irish famine museum commemorating the we have it you'll be showing you some of our of our stock holdings every treasure is a need but there are also research resources so the idea is that we have our own students from boston college come and meet here and with their classes with their professors to handle these documents and to do research on them we have people coming regularly again from ireland from other countries to work in our collections so we're open to the public generally have to learn about our collections and really anyone can come in should talk about the book of kells we should but i'm going to actually ask my colleague kathleen williams who's our ivor studies librarian to come and tell you more about this facsimile of the book  could i have the pleasure of showing one of the burns library treasures it's a facsimile of the beautiful book of kells man yes it is something about the book of  many scripts there are others this particular one is believed to have been done about the year eight hundred it could have been done in one possibly two places but same column kill left ireland and founded a monastery off the coast of scotland and ireland called iona and so there was a script or him there and many scholars believe that it was at least begun there and evidence that it was had to be a rather wealthy monastic settlement because as you mentioned kitty the illumination is just brilliant and it would have taken many many cows to create these vellum pages and that's how the the book was created using calfskin treated in a special way to create balance so there are many beautiful vellum leaves as they call them with beautiful beautiful transported to come to me which was another another monastic settlement that was governed under the same one as i own a and county meets monastic settlement was cal's so it got the name but then other scholars think it might have been done in one of the script or hymns in monasteries in the north of england because there were famous ones there the book of linda's father is another cor contains the four new testament gospels and includes some abbreviated histories of the four evangelists has beautiful illustrations of the fo and it also has canon tables which are tables that kind of commentaries are canons that show which of the four gospels contain the same passages contemporary poured so we are collecting contemporary books by writers that are still living and we are also making an attempt to collect their literary papers so but this particular poet eva boland is famous in the irish poetry world and she did a beautiful book called emigrants suite and this happens to be a very special edition of it this traffic street press puts out books made with very special covers usually each unique to the joy of the book and also a very special almost handmade paper but i chose this book because i want to tie in not just the contemporary irish writers but the fact that we have other historical works in the form of many scripts so and they had emigration from ireland during one of the big waves of immigration in ireland and that was the eight hundred and forty dollars s and fifty's the their st family member a young lad came over to seek a job in about eight hundred and forty one but then more of the family members moved over and they were writing back and forth and a lot of the letters were the father to the children and we've got a whole set of these letters and is the most important thing that's very interesting because you you i mean you actually get the poignant facts about what was actually happening in ireland in this particular letter a brother writes to his family in an america saying if it wasn't for that three dollars you sent i would have had to still sell my car so there is a lot of that back and forth a lot of the parents you know god bless you my children i hope you are well and the money you saved even though the letters are written in a very good hand it's pretty understandable it's good to have a transcription with introductions to that good health yes it is my name's elizabeth sweeney and librarian for the irish music archives here at the john jay burns library at boston college now you have to tell us about the wonderful it had to show how sick and other music at really want to know more  t well there's so much to know i can give you a little outline there was an ancient bardic tradition lasting about four hundred and fifty years from say twelve  and fifty eight was part of gaelic ireland and parts of gaelic scotland and the harper would have been very highly placed in that society and everything was learned by ear and is is that something fairly new or is that actually the dish i'm not a dance researcher myself but the dance tradition is is very strong and it's taken different twists and turns and its influence today i think by some of the competitive structures that have fostered dance and ends and then then those same me the furniture yeah yeah yeah a lot of today's fiddle tunes accordion tunes and so forth would be characterized as dance music even though little yes we have this seamus connelly collection of irish music that was launched a year and a half ago and is free on line three hundred and thirty dollars plus tunes maybe they did the link something could be though the feeling and i think you hear it in the music and you see it in the dance so we talked about that the seamus connelly collection contains some sounds but we didn't really talk about songs very much yet and since records library i would be remiss if i did not mention the frederick manning collection john mccormick i realize you do yes talk a little about the burns library at boston college and how it is that we have these irish collections here so boston college was founded here in boston eight hundred and sixty three is what it was charter so and that was in the middle of the like the irish catholic descent tripe so that's where the jesuits the society of jesus of priests who were the jesuit order of the catholic church actually set up boston college as kind of a mission school if you can think about that emotion school here in new england so again for these immigrant populations catholic populations to study so it was on the south end of boston the churches and i could consumption and then they set up a jesuit residence in a classroom building next to that again   you know a one million and a half were lost literally perished and many others just left after that and many came of course to our shores here so judges burns as parents came and they settled here in the boston area yes and belmont is where judge burns eventually made his home and it was his parents who sent him but out to boston college to get his education and it did very well by him he was a very prodigious young man studied hard and worked hard and achieved many successes as a young man so he was a graduate of our class of one thousand nine hundred and twenty one high and then i decided he wanted to pursue last studies boston college didn't have its law school for another decade so subject on burns went to harvard to do his law school degree and he was one of the few were catholic students to be admitted at that time and became actually professor following his  kept in a more recognition a notice so this is going into the to the roosevelt administration a new deal era setting up the security and exchange commission the f c c and it was joseph p kennedy who appointed  judge burns at that point to be the st general counsel so the legal advisor to the security exchange commission and he did that for a few years and then retired from his civic service at that point and went to private law practice with offices both in boston and new york so remarkable career and one of the reasons that the judge burns was so remarkable this way as he was an avid reader and that's something he learned on in the desert so he and a great love for books and so on even in his when he was very busy with his career he was still as an alarm being very generous to boston college he helped to organize at the time was called the friends of the library group so that know dance well they didn't build the building this building that we're in now was here but eventually it was renovated time judge byrnes did st though as he started getting the library the university and its library some monies to buy collections and it was really he who established this special collections of rare books now at the time it was more focused on what they called the british catholic authors so victorian poets like francis thompson was really on its way to becoming a national university that it is today and not just a smaller local commuter school and you know renowned for its education but to become really a national university so it had to build a bigger library collection so the building  him to contribute and to to organize the rest of the family to to contribute to the renovation of the building to endowments that allow us to purchase collections and to conserve them and that's particularly where the irish collections focus came becoming a fully independent republic with the active arlen and then you know because preceded sense over the last seventy five and more more years here so it's it is a comprehensive collection particularly