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!
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:
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 the Glucksman 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].