News & Events

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10/29/2024
Rachel Mathews-McKay
No Subjects
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The Library is delighted to announce that the Brendan Kennelly Literary Archive is now available to researchers in the Research Collections Reading Room. The archive was catalogued as part of Virtual Trinity Library, the Library’s ambitious project that seeks to enable online access to many of our most prized research collections across nine representative categories. The Brendan Kennelly project represents the themes of Ireland's Literary Heritage: Literary Archives and Trinity's Scholarly Contribution to the World: Trinity Icons. 

Brendan Kennelly was born in Ballylongford, County Kerry, on the 17th April 1936. He Professor of Modern Literature at Trinity and was elected Professor Emeritus after his retirement in 2005. His archival material arrived in the Library in several different tranches, from varied provenances including Brendan Kennelly’s rooms in the University, from his house in Ballylongford, and from the Kennelly family. It was accessioned over a decade; the first tranche came in around 2008-2009. A large tranche of material came in 2018 - 2022 from his family. Material was also accessioned from the English Department in 2021- 2023. 

The collection is comprised of 229 banker boxes of material which include drafts of Kennelly’s published works; drafts of unpublished works; plays; novels; drafts of reviews, articles, speeches, essays, appreciations and tributes for colleagues and other Irish literary and cultural figures as well as material relating to his academic career and life as a public figure. It also includes lecture notes and materials relating to his time teaching in Trinity and elsewhere, correspondence with family, colleagues, and the general public, as well as with Irish writers, editors and publishers. Other material includes posters and programmes, photographs, and a small amount of audio material.

The part of the collection which is now catalogued and available for consultation is the literature section. This section comprises four series. The first series contains his published poetry collections organised in publication order, and his unpublished poetry collections such as ‘A Girl’ and ‘Virginity’. The unpublished poetry is organised to ensure usability of the material and the first line is used where no title is present.

The second series is comprised of Kennelly’s published plays and some unpublished dramatic adaptions, while the third series contains drafts of his novels and short stories. The fourth series contains drafts and copies of other work and material relating to his work editing and compiling anthologies.

The literature section amounts to fifty-eight banker boxes in total and has been prioritised for release based on several factors including size, interest for the researcher, recommendations from the English Department in Trinity College Dublin, ease of release and GDPR concerns (or lack thereof). 

You can view the finding aid for the collection here.

10/25/2024
Rachel Mathews-McKay
No Subjects
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The second meeting of the new Student Climate and Nature Book Club will take place on Wednesday 13th November (12:00-14:00) in the North Training Room of the Eavan Boland Library. The November pick is a work of fiction -  Richard Power's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Overstory.  

It’s hard to capture this book in just a few lines – at its heart, it’s about trees, tree-time, and human relationships with trees and one another, told through an epic story of nine characters who become entangled with one another and with trees in various ways. You’ll never look at a tree the same way again.

There are eight copies of this book in the Library and it is widely available in paperback (it's €10 in Easons and Kenny's, for example - and you might find it second hand!). 

The Library of Trinity College Dublin: Stella Search -- The overstory / Richard Powers. (tcd.ie)

You might also find it in your local public library (it’s available on the BorrowBox app), and if you have a Spotify subscription, it’s available as an audiobook.

The Climate and Nature Book Club is a collaboration between the Library and Clare Kelly (School of Psychology) and is open to all students (undergraduate and postgraduate). It’s not a class! If you’re interested in joining the discussion, read what you can of the book, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t get very far or if you don’t like it! Read it before? Join us for the discussion!

We look forward to seeing you on the 13th November – please share this information with friends who might be interested in joining.

10/24/2024
Peter Dudley
No Subjects
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There are over 3,100 study spaces across the Library's physical estate. These study spaces are generally available on a 'first come, first served' basis, but during periods of peak demand (particularly in the run up to exams) they can come under intense pressure. To address this issue, and to ensure that all readers have a reasonable opportunity to find a suitable study space, the Library will be launching a Study Space Campaign on Wednesday 30 October that will run through to the main exam period in December. 

The study space campaign is based on the following seating policy:

Readers are not permitted to reserve study spaces by leaving their belongings or books on seats and desks. Library staff may remove belongings or books left unattended for more than 60 minutes at any study space, except for officially reserved carrels.

To enforce this policy, a dedicated steward team will patrol Library reading rooms from the 30 October onwards to free up study spaces that have been unoccupied for more than 60 minutes. The team will operate using the following procedure:

  • Leaflets will be left at study spaces observed to be unattended. The leaflets will indicate the time at which the study space was observed to be unoccupied and the time at which it will be cleared should the reader fail to return within the allotted 60-minute period.
  • Any books and belongings left at the study space will be cleared to a box and moved to a designated storage area on the same floor. This includes laptops and other portable devices, so readers are strongly advised to back-up all work regularly.
  • The information on each leaflet will also be recorded on separate clipboard sheets to ensure transparency.

The Library Study Space Campaign relies on the cooperation of all readers. We ask that you support the study space team to ensure a level playing field for those who come to the Library to study and prepare for exams. You can assist us by not leaving laptops, phones, USB drives or any other valuables unattended for any length of time and by sticking to the 60-minute rule.

The Library shall not be held responsible for damaged or stolen belongings.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us at: library@tcd.ie

10/23/2024
No Subjects
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The rise and fall of Oscar Wilde is the focus of an exhibition in Trinity’s Old Library, being held to mark 170 years since the acclaimed playwright was born on 16 October, 1854.

Entitled Oscar Wilde: From Decadence to Despair the exhibition, and an accompanying online exhibition curated by the Library of Trinity College Dublin, maps out Wilde’s meteoric rise to fame and also his dramatic fall from grace.

Poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, short-story writer and master of the one-liner, Oscar Wilde is considered one of the major writers of the late nineteenth century and is among one of Trinity’s most celebrated students. Beside his literary accomplishments, Wilde was known for his wit, flamboyant dress and conversation, and is now considered one of the first 'marketed celebrities'.

The 22 exhibits on display in the Long Room include personal photographs, memorabilia, letters, trade cards and theatre programmes which focus on the themes of Wilde’s formative years, Wilde’s years living in Continental Europe, his glittering social circle and his final years in exile. 

This material and 100 other items are also available for the public to view as a digital collection, the Oscar Wilde Collection, as part of the Virtual Trinity Library.

Highlights of the exhibition include:

  • A set of beautifully illustrated commercial trade cards inspired by Wilde’s famous “aesthetic tour” of America in 1882. Wilde was a master of self-promotion, and his face was used more than any other celebrity in 1882 to promote a wide variety of products from cigars to kitchen stoves, even extending to bosom beautifiers and complexion enhancers
  • A letter to his classics professor in Trinity, Sir John Pentland Mahaffy (former Provost of Trinity) complimenting him as “my first and best teacher” and “the scholar who showed me how to love Greek things”.
  • There is also a remarkable ink caricature of Wilde being rebuked for a midnight aesthetic meeting in the Suggestion Book of the Philosophical Society.
  • Wilde's silver calling card case, a supposed gift from his friend Ada Leverson presented to him on his release from Reading Gaol, inscribed “For Sebastian Melmoth from Sphinx”.
  • A receipt for the sum of £25 received from his friend More Adey. With the money his friends purchased clothes, soap, scent and hair-dye so he could feel “physically cleaned of the stain and soil of prison life”.
  • A moving letter from Wilde to his friend, the writer Eliza Stannard, written shortly after his release from Reading Gaol in May 1897. Writing from a hotel in Normandy, Wilde remarks, “of course I have passed through a very terrible punishment and have suffered to the pitch of anguish and despair” and refers to himself as “an unworthy son”. 

The exhibition forms part of the  Book of Kells Experience and runs until January 29, 2025. See here to book tickets for both exhibitions. 

Curator of the exhibition and Assistant Librarian at the Library of Trinity College Dublin Caoimhe Ní Ghormáin said: "Oscar Wilde remains an immensely popular and intriguing character today. Through this exhibition we aim to celebrate Wilde as a Dubliner and also as one of Trinity College Dublin's most famous alumni by exploring the unique items on display in the Long Room from the Library's Oscar Wilde collection."

Laura Shanahan, Head of Research Collections, the Library of Trinity College Dublin, added:  

“The Oscar Wilde Collection held at the Library of Trinity College Dublin comprises items of great significance, including manuscript and print materials; letters, photographs and some unique items of memorabilia among others. It is the only Oscar Wilde archive held in a public institution in Ireland.  Researchers including Wilde biographers have made extensive use of the archive over the years. We are delighted to share the collection with new audiences in this Long Room exhibition and online exhibition.”

The exhibition is a rerun of a similar exhibition held in 2017 and complements an exhibition currently being held in Magdalen College, University of Oxford, to mark 150 years since Wilde matriculated from the College. Three items from Trinity’s Oscar Wilde collection have been loaned to Oxford for this exhibition — a sales catalogue of Wilde's books and household goods; a letter from Wilde to his son Cyril; and the calling card of ‘Sebastian Melmoth’.

10/21/2024
profile-icon Greg Sheaf
No Subjects
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This week is International Open Access Week (October 21st – 27th). It is an annual opportunity to promote, educate and share experience on making research freely and openly available. 

The theme for Open Access (OA) Week this year is ‘Community Over Commercialisation’ with a call to apply Open Scholarship approaches in the best interests of both academic and public communities.  

Events to mark the week are taking place internationally with several online webinars and virtual discussions covering everything from the evolution and future of the Open movement to how Open Access can help deliver the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).   

On the Trinity campus, the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts & Humanities Research Institute will host ‘Unharnessing Open Research in Ireland’ on Wednesday October 23rd. The event, organised by the SCOIR project, will focus on leveraging copyright and institutional policies to deliver Open Access.

If you want find out more about Open Access, Open Publishing and how you can make your work open, you can visit the Library of Trinity College Dublin’s  Scholarly Communication LibGuide.

Details and booking links for International Open Access Week events are available here

Details and booking for the SCOIR event are available here.

10/18/2024
profile-icon Greg Sheaf
No Subjects
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For all Trinity researchers, it is important to note that Article Processing Charges (APCs) for Elsevier have now been exhausted and no further article charges will be covered until 1 January 2025.

For context, Trinity College Dublin participates in 27 Transformative Agreements with scholarly publishers, largely negotiated via the IReL consortium. 

Their aim is to move scholarly publishing from a subscription-based model (pay to access/read) to a payment to publish (in open access) model. Most of these agreements are based on the payment of Article Processing Charges (APCs). The agreements Trinity currently participate in are listed on the IReL website.

These agreements do not cover publishers’ full journal portfolios, and some do not cover 100% of the publications in the journals included by researchers from the participating institutions. 

This can lead to frustrating situations for researchers facing publishing fees where they previously did not (while quotas were still full). 

The following open access agreements have less than 100% coverage within the included journals:

  • Wiley (fully-oa ‘gold’ journals): quota spent as of August 2024
  • Taylor & Francis: quota spent as of end of August 2024
  • Springer Nature (Springer Compact): quota spent as of September 2024
  • Elsevier (Science Direct): quota spent as of 14 October 2024
  • Optica Publishing Group, OPG: covered to 30 October 2024 only
  • Royal Society of Chemistry, RSC: projected to cover the full year
  • Wiley (hybrid journals): projected to cover the full year
  • Elsevier (Cell Press hybrid journals): projected to cover the full year

More details and updates are available on the Library’s LibGuide on the topic.

The 2025 allocations will become available in January. IReL and the Library will push for 100% coverage in negotiations for new agreements – though there is no guarantee of achieving this. It is therefore best to plan, as far as possible, for the scenario that some limited quotas will remain in place with annual cut-off points in September/October.  Remember, too, Trinity authors are required to deposit their scholarly articles in TARA (via ‘green’ open access), regardless of the open or closed status of the journal. 

For practical advice see our TARA LibGuide

If any Trinity researcher has any further queries, please contact: publisherapproval@tcd.ie.

10/09/2024
profile-icon Greg Sheaf
No Subjects
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Trinity College Dublin is renaming the Library (former Berkeley Library) after the acclaimed Irish poet Eavan Boland. This decision was made by the University Board today [9 October 2024] after a period of research, analysis and public consultation overseen by the Trinity Legacies Review Working Group (TLRWG).

Eavan Boland receiving an honorary degree from Trinity College Dublin with the former University Chancellor, Mary Robinson
Eavan Boland receiving an honorary degree from Trinity College Dublin with the former University Chancellor, Mary Robinson

The Eavan Boland Library will be the first building on Trinity’s campus to be named after a woman.

Eavan Boland was one of the foremost women in Irish literature, publishing many collections of poetry, a memoir Object Lessons (1995), as well as teaching and lecturing in Ireland and in the US.

It had been decided in April 2023 that the continued use of George Berkeley’s name on its main Library was inconsistent with the University’s core values of human dignity, freedom, inclusivity, and equality. Since then, its largest Library has been known simply as ‘The Library’.

In September 2024, after a process of deliberation including consideration of the 855 public submissions, the TLRWG identified several options for the renaming of the Library, with their preferred recommendation being The Eavan Boland Library.

A paper by TLRWG member Catriona Crowe noted that Boland’s “great achievement was to move women from the object (muse, dream, symbol) of poetry to the subject who was writing the poem”. Her name, she wrote, “would bring a magnificent poetic, scholarly and feminist reputation to a building dedicated to the humanities”.

Provost Dr Linda Doyle said:

It is a fitting recognition of Eavan Boland’s poetic genius that our main Library, used by so many students and staff, will now carry her name.

Eavan’s poetry is well known across the generations, and her outstanding artistic contribution to highlighting the role of women in Irish society is widely appreciated. 

I want to sincerely thank everyone who participated in the process that has led us to today’s decision. It was marked by broad consultation and very thoughtful conversations.

Professor Eoin O Sullivan, Senior Dean and Chair of the Trinity Legacies Review Working Group, said:

We arrived at this point because of the hard work and conviction of many people in Trinity’s community, not least the students who not only called for a change in the Library’s name, but who worked with us to achieve that change. 

We are grateful for the 855 submissions from within Trinity and outside which animated our deliberations and reflections on the matter.

Librarian and College Archivist at Trinity College Dublin, Helen Shenton said:

Libraries are both fundamental constants in the university and simultaneously constantly in flux. Technological advances, societal changes and cultural evolutions shape the Library for each generation. As a 21st century Library, the name change to this unique library building prioritises the current generation of students’ experience of a welcoming and supportive Library space.

Under its new name, it will provide an inclusive and inspirational space for generations of students to come, bolstered now by Eavan Boland’s scholarly and feminist reputation.

At a debate on the new name in February 2024 hosted by the University Historical Society with the support of the TLRWG, five guest speakers and five students spoke in favour of ten names selected by the society based on popular suggestions received. The names included Eavan Boland, Francis Sheehy Skeffington, Paul Koralek (the architect of the Library building), Oscar Wilde and Wolfe Tone. Trinity History student Méabh Scahill called Boland “a seminal poet in the Irish literary tradition, whose work carved out a space for women within that tradition.”

About Eavan Boland

Born in Dublin in 1944, Boland spent some early years in London and New York, returning to Ireland to attend secondary school in Killiney and later university at Trinity College Dublin. She died in 2020.

Her many awards include a Lannan Foundation Award in Poetry and an American Ireland Fund Literary Award. She taught at Trinity, University College Dublin, Bowdoin College, and at Stanford University since 1996, where she was the Bella Mabury and Eloise Mabury Knapp Professor in the Humanities and Melvin and Bill Lane Professor of English and director of the creative writing programme. 

About the Library − de-naming and renaming

Opened in 1967, Trinity’s largest library was named in 1978 after George Berkeley. Until then it was known as the ‘New Library.’ 

Berkeley published some of his most important philosophical works while at Trinity in the 1700s. He bought slaves – named Philip, Anthony, Edward, and Agnes Berkeley – to work on his Rhode Island estate in 1730-31 and sought to advance ideology in support of slavery.

In August 2022, the Trinity College Dublin Students Union announced that it would be referring to the Library as the ‘X’ Library in all future communications, until Trinity provided a renaming plan. 

About the TLRWG

The Trinity Legacies Review Working Group was established by the Provost in October 2022. 

Its first act was to commission an evidence-based review on Bishop George Berkeley. In 2022 it opened a public call for submissions on the matter.

In 2023 it reached a consensus that the Library be de-named and re-named. 

The Board considered and approved a memorandum by the Provost on this matter in April 2023. 

Trinity will continue to hold George Berkeley’s philosophical works in the Library collections and continue to teach and to research his works. The broad guidance that the TLRWG gave regarding submissions for a new name included that names had to have a direct connection to Trinity and that names of living persons would not be considered.

In total, 855 submissions were received on renaming the Library. For more on the process, see here.

Field is required.