Developing State-of-the-Art 18th Century and 21st Century Libraries at Trinity College Dublin
Creators: name: Shenton, Helen
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2024
Subjects: virtual library
strategy
conservation
research
innovation

description: This presentation explores three major, interrelated, future-oriented strategic programmes in the Library of Trinity College Dublin, and their impact on the university, on scholarship, on Ireland, and beyond.

Firstly, the 18th century ‘Old Library’ at Trinity College Dublin is one of the most wondrous libraries in the world and probably the most identifiable interior in Ireland. A major programme, the Old Library Redevelopment Project, is underway to conserve the historic building; to preserve the 750,000 unique and distinct collection items within; to create an inspirational research collection study centre; and to reimagine the exhibition for the Book of Kells, currently visited by 900,000+ international visitors annually.

At the same time, a major programme to create the Virtual Trinity Library is underway. The vision is to enable access to the exceptional historic collections, ranging from medieval manuscripts to contemporary literary archives, for anyone around the world with an energy source and an internet connection. As well as accelerating digital content creation, the Virtual Trinity Library is underpinned by fundamental activities of conserving, curating, metadata creation, advanced technology (eg AI for automated transcription) and scholarly research. The aim is to join the universe of other international virtual libraries and aggregators of digital content, from Europeana to the Digital Public Library of America, to create a digital entity of research possibilities far beyond text and data mining.

The two parallel programmes are deeply complementary and intertwined. Virtual Trinity Library is accelerating the digital offering of Trinity College Dublin and catalysing primary research. The output has recently provided the collection content for a new, innovative, digital immersive 'Book of Kells Experience' which has just opened to visitors ahead of the closure of the Old Library for conservation. Both programmes are platforms for interacting with society - on site in the immersive exhibition for visitors and virtually for any scholar or schoolchild around the world.

A third major programme has just started to create a new Research and Innovation Library on Trinity’s new research campus situated in the heart of Dublin’s ‘Silicon Docks,’ home to the European headquarters of Google, LinkedIn, X, Facebook and many start-ups. The concept for the new Library is ‘digital first and foremost.’

This state-of-the-art, digital-only library is in the service of innovation, research and society. Given the footfall in ‘Silicon Docks’ and the co-location with industry and university researchers and innovators, this library represents a new platform of interacting with society.

These are all part of the medium to long-term strategy for the Library at Trinity College Dublin (see TCD Library Strategy 2015-2020; Continuity & Development of the Library Strategy to 2026).

In the presentation I will explore the impact of simultaneous, large-scale, future-oriented programmes on Trinity’s teaching and research community; on Dublin’s economy; and on the preservation of World Heritage. These strategic infrastructure initiatives are sufficiently advanced to present further to my keynote presentation at IFLA 2022. This work comprises both new initiatives and mature work in progress, and I will reflect on some of the challenges and opportunities.