News & Events
Source: https://libguides.tcd.ie/blogs/news Parent: https://www.tcd.ie/library/
April's Climate Café Book Club: Birnam Wood
03/05/2026
Greg Sheaf
No Subjects
Join the Library and Dr Clare Kelly for a special Climate Café Book Club Collaboration on Thursday 2nd April, 2-4pm in the North Training Room of the Eavan Boland Library.
We will be discussing Booker Prize-winning author Eleanor Catton's nail-biting satirical eco thriller, Birnam Wood. Joined by UCD Professor of English, Adam Kelly, our conversation will connect with the book's themes of ecological activism, power, morality, and what exactly we should do with those billionaires.
The book is an engrossing and quick read. It's strongly recommended that you finish it before the meeting, since the discussion will inevitably contain spoilers!
There are print and e copies in the Library, and it is widely available in paperback and audiobook.
This is an in-person café and is open to all members of the College community: students, staff - professional, research, academic, so please spread the word.
Featured image - The Birnam Oak, W. L. Tarbert, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
02/19/2026
No Subjects
On Wednesday 18 February 2026 The Library welcomed undergraduate learners from the “Beckett Beyond” module (designed by Céline Thobois-Gupta) – as members of the Trinity research community – to launch the exhibition of their research zines on Samuel Beckett’s drama and their independently selected area of inquiry in the Orientation Space of the Eavan Boland Library. The exhibition runs during Hilary Term: we hope that you will enjoy consulting the material artefacts and sometimes going beyond the page via QR codes.
The exhibition features 15 zines, which add to the existing series archived in the Library’s permanent collection, now counting over 40 undergraduate research outputs. This year, zinesters investigated topics, such as silence, landscape, repetition, neurodivergence, grief, clowns, embodiment, escapism, mechanicality, directing, gender, company, geography and social media. They familiarised themselves with research methodologies from a range of fields, often combining them together to adapt to the complexity of the questions they unearthed from Beckett’s creative ecosystem. To find out more about the teaching and learning that sustained the development of those projects, you can consult the “Beckett Beyond 2026” Library Guide.
Their zines communicate the outcomes of their mini-research projects for expert and non-expert audiences, aiming to make the findings accessible beyond Theatre and Drama Studies, as they discovered that Beckett’s oeuvre is a fertile soil for interdisciplinary entanglements. The zinesters hope that the exhibition will be a site for new interactions and synergies: some zines invite responses via QR codes, and all researchers can be contacted by email for further academic discussions (their addresses can be found on the back of their publications).
The Beckett Beyond Zine Exhibition is presented as a collaboration between the Library, the Department of Drama and the Trinity Centre for Beckett Studies. We congratulate the cohort on their achievement, and we express our gratitude to all the visitors who will engage with the zines.
Library Sustainability Action Plan 2026 Launched
02/11/2026
Caoimhe Ni Lochlainn
No Subjects
The Library Sustainability Action Plan 2026 was launched last week [February 3, 2026] by the Vice-Provost for Biodiversity and Climate Action, Professor Jane Stout of Trinity Sustainability, and Director of Climate GatewayProfessor of Climate Science, Karen Wiltshire.
Library staff gathered at a series of staff forums led by the Librarian and College Archivist, Helen Shenton and Chair of the Library Sustainability Steering Group, Sarah VanSnick who presented the new Library Sustainability Action Plan.
Both Professors Stout and Wiltshire also gave inspiring presentations on sustainability and Trinity’s role within it at the Library Staff Forums on the occasion of the launch.
The Library of Trinity College Dublin is committed to Sustainability and it is a cross-cutting priority in the Library Strategy. In 2024/25 the Library formed a Sustainability Group and over 40 members of staff joined sub-groups to discuss and prioritise sustainability actions around six themes:
- Proactive Support for Research
- Trusted Information Resource
- Library Estates
- Content and Collections
- How the Library Operates
- Individual Library Staff
The Library Sustainability Action Plan 2026 is rooted in the work of these sustainability sub-groups which ensures that Library staff have been the drivers in selecting and building the initiatives and will be key to achieving the results, both in 2026 and over the longer term.
The Library Sustainability Action Plan has been designed to integrate with the overall Trinity College Dublin Sustainability Strategy 2023-2030 and is a key component of the Library’s commitment to the Green Library Manifesto.
Through the Library’s central role in the overall University it is uniquely placed to increase understanding of what sustainability means for the entire College community and to inform sustainability actions. This fundamental role of the Library underpins a number of the actions in this Library Action Plan. We look forward to delivering the first set of actions over the coming year, 2026.
The Newly Restored Printing House Opens with an Exhibition on the Yeats Sisters & Irish Design
01/30/2026
Caoimhe Ni Lochlainn
No Subjects
The exhibition, entitled ‘The Yeats Sisters & Irish Design’, celebrates the work and legacy of Elizabeth and Susan (Lily) Yeats. Founders and directors of Cuala Industries (1908-1940), they were nationally and internationally recognised as leading figures in the Arts and Crafts movement.
The Printing Houseis the third oldest building on the campus of Trinity College Dublin. The building housed Ireland’s oldest printing and publishing house, Dublin University Press until 1976. The first publication of Dublin University Press was Plato’s Dialogues in 1738. It also housed the Cuala printing press for a period of time.
Cuala Industries was a cultural focal point in early 20th century Ireland. Over the course of its history many of Ireland’s leading writers and artists were part of its creative stable.
On display are photographs and other archival material giving a flavour of the working lives of the Cuala women as well as examples of the prints and needlecraft produced by the business. The exhibition is in collaboration with the Department of Foreign Affairs. All are welcome to this free exhibition, please call into the Printing House between 10am-4pm Monday-Friday.
The Cuala Press is part of the Virtual Trinity Library initiative, and this display coincides with a loan of Cuala Press material by the Library to Boston College’s McMullen Museum of Art for an exhibition on Collaborating in Conflict: The Yeats Family and the Public Arts.
On Tuesday, 3 February (6pm), the Trinity Long Room Hub will host a discussion highlighting Trinity's collaboration with Boston College's McMullen Museum of Art spring 2026 exhibition, "Collaborating in Conflict: The Yeats Family and the Public Arts". The discussion will also address the Cuala Press archives and other Yeats collections held by both universities. \ \ A short panel presentations will be given by Angela Griffith, Principal Investigator of Trinity's Cuala Press Project, along with TRIARC Visiting Research Fellow Billy Shortall, who will speak on how Cuala Press prints aimed to cultivate a positive image of Ireland. Trinity professor of English Tom Walker will speak on W.B. Yeats and the visual and applied arts. Boston College's Burns Librarian Christian Dupont will provide an overview of the Boston College exhibition and discuss Lily Yeats's embroidered Stations of the Cross displayed at the 1932 Eucharistic Congress. Laura Shanahan, Head of Research Collections at the Library of Trinity College Dublin, will moderate the discussion among panellists and the audience.
New Library Catalogue Relaunch: Update 9-01-26
01/09/2026
No Subjects
We are delighted to confirm that the new 'Library catalogue' will be officially re-launched on Monday 12 January 2026. The current Library catalogue, Stella Search, will remain temporarily available via a link under the Library home page search box up to Thursday 12 February, 2026, at which point it will be fully removed and switched off.
There will then be two main search platforms available via the Library website home page:
- Library Catalogue: for Library holdings, such as print books, e-books, journal and e-journal titles, as well as manuscripts and archives;
- Articles and More: for subscribed e-resources and database content, such as full-text e-journal articles and some e-books.
The content available via the 'articles and more' platform has been streamlined and populated afresh with our subscribed databases and packages.
Check out the Library Guide on The New Library Discovery Platforms for further details including FAQs.
World Digital Preservation Day 2025
11/06/2025
No Subjects
Happy World Digital Preservation Day! The theme for this year is Why Preserve?
Why do we Preserve?
From the earliest evidence of human activity, humans have sought to preserve. This impulse ranges from the preservation of cultural meaning through cave paintings and petroglyphs, to the use of clay tokens for accounting and administration, to the later development of cuneiform as the earliest known writing system. All shared a common purpose: to store and communicate information outside limits of a human mind - interpretable long after their creators’ deaths.
Digital information is the modern heir to this long lineage of human preservation, and it is incumbent upon us to approach it with the same care and foresight as our ancestors did. What we preserve is far more than a storage medium - hard-drives, servers, or cloud platforms - or the specific file formats we use, such as Microsoft Word documents or PDFs. At its core, what endures are the ideas, insights, knowledge, and creative expression encoded within these digital forms - the thoughts, intentions, and imagination of the human mind, preserved so that future generations can encounter, interpret, and be inspired by them. Just as cave paintings, clay tokens, and cuneiform carried meaning across millennia, today’s digital artifacts hold the potential to communicate, inspire, and bear witness to our time long into the future. Preserving them is not merely a technical task; it is an ethical, social, and cultural responsibility to safeguard the intellectual and cultural legacy of humanity.
Just as our ancestors carefully chose which marks, objects, or records to leave behind, we must be thoughtful and considerate about what digital traces we protect. Unlike physical artifacts, digital information is fragile in ways our predecessors could not have imagined: it is subject to obsolescence, corruption, and the pace of technological change. Yet, it offers unprecedented opportunities for longevity, through replication and migration, as well as through careful metadata documentation, ensuring that meaning and context endure even as technologies evolve. Digital preservation is always ongoing and never a finished task; materials are never preserved, rather they are always in the process of being preserved. The key to digital preservation is active stewardship over time.
Recent Digital Preservation Activities at The Library of Trinity College Dublin
We are actively involved in numerous digital preservation activities. In recent years we have acquired archival collections of global significance which contain born-digital artefacts, engaged in e-mail preservation, preserved both parts of the University website and project-based websites through web archiving; and are currently undertaking a pilot programme with a digital preservation system.
E-Mail Preservation
E-Mail is one of the most common forms of communication today. They document conversations, decisions, and relationships and will be essential source material for future researchers seeking to understand our world. To enable their future study requires us to begin preserving them now. We have acquired numerous e-mail accounts and preserving them often requires carefully migrating them to formats that are more sustainable over the long-term, creating multiple copies, and ensuring we can demonstrate the integrity and authenticity of what we are preserving. We also need to be conscious of privacy concerns given the sensitive content that is often contained within e-mails. As a result, most emails we are preserving are not yet available to researchers but ensuring that they can be available in the future necessitates us preserving them today to make future discovery and access possible.
Web Archiving
Websites are a key source for documenting life in our digital age. They can capture how institutions such as Trinity College, Dublin present themselves to the world, providing future researchers with evidence of how they expressed their identity. Websites can also be used to present the outputs of academic projects that need to be sustained beyond their funding cycle. Archiving them can preserve the context, legacy, and intellectual impact, of projects long after their conclusion. However, anyone who has tried to revisit an old website link knows how often the content is no longer accessible. The web is constantly changing, with content created and then deleted in quick succession, essential updates not being funded, or hosting costs not being available, ensuring that content will not be available in the future. Without active preservation, future researchers will be faced with digital gaps instead of the stories and content these records hold. To combat this, the Library has engaged in web archiving, a series of steps to allow future users to interact with a website as it looked on the day it was archived and when the website may no longer be available on the live web. We have captures of some of the Library website and some of the University’s website. We have also helped to sustain project websites which were no longer being actively managed. We plan on building on this work in the coming year, capturing more content and ensuring that more of our digital presence can be preserved for the future, while also providing access to some content.
Pilot Programme
We have also recently embarked on a pilot programme in partnership with the digital preservation company Preservica. This initiative will help us refine our technical requirements, ensuring that our future approach is aligned with the diverse needs of stakeholders across the University. The lessons learned will inform future planning, helping us establish a sustainable framework for safeguarding the University’s growing body of digital heritage. The pilot will also provide a valuable opportunity to develop and test new workflows for managing digital content, and, for the first time, to provide secure access to born-digital material. This is a significant development for the Library, and we will have more exciting digital preservation announcements over the next year!
Old Library exhibition spotlights 400 years of Ireland in maps
10/10/2025
No Subjects
Rare 16th century sea maps of Ireland, Cromwellian-era land surveys and 19th tourist maps feature in a new exhibition in the Old Library, Trinity College Dublin.
Entitled ‘The Island of Ireland in Maps’, the exhibition and accompanying online exhibition celebrate the extensive cartographic holdings of the Library of Trinity College Dublin in its Glucksman Map Library, with particular focus on maps from the 16th century to the mid 20th century.
“This is a wonderful opportunity to explore some of the beautiful and intriguing maps held in the Glucksman Map Library, which is dedicated to the care and consultation of over half a million maps. Some 150,000 of Trinity’s maps relate to Ireland, making it home to the largest printed map collection in Ireland,” the Librarian and College Archivist, Helen Shenton said.
The exhibitions include rare 16th century maps of Ireland developed by navigators exploring the Atlantic world, detailed land surveys undertaken as part of the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland as well as sea charts, atlases, relief models, aerial views, globes, and tourist maps.
Highlights from the two exhibitions include:
- The oldest map of Ireland in the Glucksman Library, a 1561 engraving of Ireland and Great Britain.
- A 1689 map detailing parishes, baronies and counties drawn from the Down Survey which mapped all the land to be confiscated and redistributed following the Cromwellian conquest.
- A 1611 coloured map of Leinster which includes an inset containing the earliest surviving plan of Dublin.
- An 1839 geological map across six large sheets originally made for planning the railway network in Ireland.
- A foldable pocket-size map of Dublin Ordnance Survey produced in 1902-1906 was designed to meet the growth of the tourist and leisure market.
- An Irish-language school atlas of Ireland dating from 1948 with placenames written in Gaelic script.
Map Librarian Paul Ferguson, curator of the exhibition, explains: “The first printed maps of Ireland were developed by navigators and traders operating in what they understood at the edge of the Atlantic world. Later maps were compiled by surveyors as part of the confiscation and transfer of land from Irish landowners to English and Scottish settlers. Completed just before the Great Irish Famine, the first Ordnance Survey mapped the landscape in amazing detail”.
As a legal deposit library for Ireland the Glucksman Library continues to receive approx. 900 new map titles annually. Its collections are an important resource for students, researchers, and professionals, as well as local and family historians.
The physical exhibition is on display in the Long Room of the Old Library and runs until early February 2026. It forms part of the Book of Kells Experience. See here to book tickets. The online exhibitions can be viewed on the Library’s website.
About theGlucksman Map Library
The Glucksman Map Library was established in 1987. It holds over half a million maps and is the largest collection of printed maps in Ireland, including rare older material as well as modern mapping. The map library was named after benefactors Lewis and Loretta Glucksman when it moved into purpose-designed premises in the Ussher Library in 2003.
The Map Library serves students and staff of Trinity as well as students and researchers from other institutions. It also responds to map enquiries from professional and business people as well as from the general public interested in place, local studies and the changing Irish landscape.
Images:
1. A map of the Ulster counties / Francis Jobson. [c.1598].
Ecological Emergency Book Club Collaboration with UCD
10/08/2025
No Subjects
Join the Library for a special Ecological Emergency Book Club Collaboration on Wednesday 22nd October, 2-4pm in the North Training Room of the Eavan Boland Library.
Together with Adam Kelly, Associate Prof of English in UCD, we’ll discuss Playground, the new novel by Richard Powers (author of The Overstory). The novel is many things - an ode to the ocean and the wondrous things that live there, a consideration of colonialism and neocolonialism, a reflection on friendship, and a provocation on what generative AI means for memory, reality, and the future of life on earth. Despite these vast and profound themes, this book is a lot easier and quicker to read than Powers’ other recent novels!
Adam Kelly recently authored an op-ed in the Irish times on the topic of Playground, its central theme - generative AI, and what genAI means for the university. He wrote “LLMs are the most effective tool ever created to curtail the traditional work of universities, the cultivation of critical individual minds". Members of the Book Club also authored an op-ed arguing that the university should resist generative AI. The book club discussion will bridge from the themes explore in the novel to these broader themes of what generative AI means for higher education and the world beyond.
The book is widely available in paperback and as an audiobook (just short of 14hrs). Four copies of Powers' 'Playground’ will be available from the Trinity Library by the end of this week, and you will find it at your local library too.
The Book Club meeting will be in person and is open to all members of the College community (students, staff - professional, research, academic), so please spread the word!
Educational Outreach and Civic Engagement: A Visit from the Muslim Sisters of Éire
09/26/2025
No Subjects
The Library had the pleasure of welcoming members of the Muslim Sisters of Éire for a special tour this week. The visit offered an opportunity to explore the Library’s rich heritage, from the Old Library and the Book of Kells to the thought-provoking De-naming and Renaming Exhibition in the Eavan Boland Library.
Exploring the Old Library & the Book of Kells
The tour began with a walk-through Trinity’s most iconic spaces, the Book of Kells exhibition and the Old Library’s Long Room. Visitors were introduced to the history, artistry, and global significance of the Book of Kells and other treasured manuscripts. The Long Room, with its soaring barrel-vault ceiling and intriguing busts of significant figures, provided the backdrop for the group as they learned about the Library and its role in housing so much knowledge and history.
Engaging with the De-naming and Renaming Exhibition
The group also visited the De-naming and Renaming Exhibition in the Eavan Boland Library, which explores how names, histories, and identities shape the spaces we inhabit. This exhibition prompted rich discussion about heritage, representation, and inclusion, themes central to both the Library and the work of the Muslim Sisters of Éire.
Building Connections
It was wonderful to see how the tour fostered dialogue about culture, history, and belonging. Sharing Trinity’s collections and exhibitions with community groups like the Muslim Sisters of Éire helps us build bridges between the University and wider society, reflecting our commitment to inclusive heritage and learning.
“We are grateful to the Muslim Sisters of Éire for visiting and for bringing their perspectives and curiosity to the Library. We look forward to welcoming them – and many other community groups – again soon,” said the Library’s Educational Outreach and Civic Engagement Manager Seán Adderley.
Welcome to the new academic year from the Librarian
09/22/2025
Caoimhe Ni Lochlainn
No Subjects
Dear students and staff,
A very warm welcome to the new academic year, especially to first-year undergraduates, new postgraduates and new members of the Trinity community.
Library Supports & Services
Every student has access to a dedicated librarian who is available to support you throughout your academic journey at Trinity. If you have not already met your Subject Librarian you will meet them at a Library class or workshop.
All Library staff are here to assist you. Ask any member of the helpful team at Library counters, email your Subject Librarian or library@tcd.ie.
The Library HITS (Helpful Information for Trinity Students) programme will also help you with a wide range of skills workshops relevant to your studies.
UK Electronic Legal Deposit
Electronic Legal Deposit (UK) is available again on dedicated terminals in the Library. Access to the electronic Legal Deposit (eLD) content was disrupted due to the major cyber-attack of the British Library at the end of October 2023. Following a large-scale exercise to confirm the eLD content was free of malware, a new secure interface was developed and is now available in all Trinity’s reading rooms, as well as the other five UK legal deposit libraries.
Digital Collections and Open Scholarship
In a significant step for the Library’s contribution to Open Scholarship, the Library’s digitised content can now be made available for re-use under an open licence on the Library’s Digital Collections platform. This is in line with the new ‘Policy on Open Licensing of the Library’s Digitised Content’. Here are details of the Creative Commons Attribution licence to use.
New search and discovery platforms
The Library launched two new search and discovery platforms to replace Stella Search at the beginning of September. They are the ‘Library Catalogue’ for Library holdings; and ‘Articles and More’ for subscribed e-resources and database content. Some technical issues have arisen with the ‘Library Catalogue’ therefore Stella Search has been temporarily reinstated as the primary catalogue for Library holdings. You can find further information and updates in our Library Guide and Library home page.
The Eavan Boland Library
The Library is holding an outdoor exhibition on Eavan Boland for those who may wish to find out more about the acclaimed Irish poet. The former Berkeley Library was renamed the Eavan Boland Library last year. There is a display about the denaming and renaming process in the foyer and it also featured in an hour-long RTÉ Nationwide programme RTÉ player.
Old Library Redevelopment Project
The major conservation programme is well underway of the Old Library’s 18th century building. Three quarters of a million of the most valuable and vulnerable collection items have been safely transferred, security tagged and catalogued as part of the major Decant of the Research Collections from the Old Library last year. This timelapse gives a sense of all that it involved. The Research Collections Study Centre is now in the Atrium of the Ussher Library. A new integrated Design Team is on board with McCullough Mulvin as the architects. The Old Library is anticipated to remain open until the end of 2027 at which point the Book of Kells will transfer to the beautifully restored Printing House, adjacent to the ‘Book of Kells Experience’ red pavilion.
Later this semester, a temporary display of Cuala Press material from the Library’s collections will open in the newly conserved Printing House, to pilot its use as a display space; more details to follow.
A reminder also that Trinity staff and students can continue to visit the Old Library and the new ‘Book of Kells Experience’ in New Square for free through this link (by using Student/Staff ID number in the promo code box).
Virtual Trinity Library
The Library is currently hosting an exhibition in the Long Room ’The Island of Ireland in Maps’, showcasing maps from the 16th century onwards. The exhibition highlights the Library’s extensive cartographic resources. This will be followed in February 2026 by an exhibition on the founder of the Irish National Land League Michael Davitt, whose papers are being conserved and digitised as part of the Virtual Trinity Library.
New Research and Innovation Laidlaw Library at Trinity East
The first ‘digital first and foremost’ Research & Innovation Laidlaw Library is planned as an anchor to the growing campus at Trinity East, on Dublin’s Grand Canal Quay, with its anticipated opening at the end of 2027. The Laidlaw Library is being created from the refurbishment of an existing building and adjoins Trinity’s Portal Innovation Hub. Consultation across the University reinforced the need for different sorts of library spaces and surfaced many creative ideas for this first new library in the 21st century.
Library Educational Outreach and Civic Engagement
The Library is developing a programme of activities and supports that will further promote equality, diversity and inclusion. The aim is to create more opportunities for people with intellectual disabilities, physical disabilities, students from overseas and non-traditional user groups to engage with the Library collections.
As part of becoming a ‘Green Library’, the Library is hosting a Climate Café, which is an opportunity for staff and students to discuss climate related issues. Supported by the Global Room, and Trinity Sustainability, it will include book discussions, talks and visible mending workshops among other activities every month.
Libraries and Democracy
Finally, Libraries have been called ‘the last bastions of democracy’. In a world of malinformation, misinformation and disinformation, the value and values of libraries and archives have never been so important. In today’s geo-politics, libraries are increasingly politicised, as articulated in his article in the Observer ‘There is no political power without power over the archive,’ by Bodley’s Librarian Richard Ovenden, in which he outlines how the banning of books and deletion of data represent a fundamental threat to democracy. Libraries are not only safe spaces conducive to study and thought, but are guardians of knowledge, potential refuges for threatened research data and endangered archives, and trusted transmitters of information for our current communities and for the future.
With warmest good wishes for the forthcoming semester,
Helen Shenton
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Helen Shenton FRSA, FIIC\ Librarian and College Archivist\ The Library of Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin
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