Trinity College Library Dublin: A history, by Peter Fox, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 2014, 397 pp., AU$48.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-1107-01120-5
Peter Fox, former Librarian of both Trinity College, Dublin (TCD hereafter) and
Cambridge University Library, has written the first comprehensive, scholarly
history of TCD Library. Fox begins by stating TCD has ‘the oldest and by far
the largest library in Ireland and one of the most important university libraries
in Europe’. His book is thus a key document both in library history and in the
intellectual life of Ireland.
Fox begins with its foundation in 1592 by James Ussher and concludes in
2002, when William Simpson left as Librarian to take up a position in
Manchester. Fox places the history of the Library within the TCD framework,
the culture and politics of Dublin and then within the wider perspectives of
library developments, particularly in the context of legal deposit libraries. Fox
states, ‘Even the Library's legal deposit status was an incidental result of a
political decision made for other reasons, and the college remained indifferent
at first to what was the most important gift in the library's history’.
Legal deposit, which began in 1801, coincided with the arrival of the Fagel
collection, which increased the library's collections by 40 per cent. Legal
deposit issues came to a head with Irish independence: a number of
publishers in Britain did not see why they were required to deposit books in a
Dublin library. The legal deposit entitlement of every book and serial
published in the United Kingdom and Ireland, was, at times, a double-edged
sword in terms of space and processing, even though legal deposit libraries
for many years rejected ephemera, whose designation included many
categories such as crime fiction and erotica.
Fox provides a detailed, illuminating historical overview with cogent insights.
The period after Irish independence saw the Library in serious decline, and it
was not till the 1950s that it began to recover. As ever with libraries, issues of
finance, space and staffing play out across the centuries within the
institutional and political settings, not least the discussions leading up to the
new library building, opened in 1967.
Librarians played a crucial role, both positive and negative. Featuring on the
positive, were Librarians Thomas Leyland, the eccentric ‘Jacky’ Barrett and
James Henthorn Todd, while in the modern era much is owed to Fox himself
and his successor, William Simpson. Fox‘s focus on Library internal issues
range over changing catalogues access, acquisition policies and staffing
structures. He acknowledges, in his last chapter, the difficulties in providing an
objective summation of recent developments, particularly within the context of
dramatic technological change.
Fox acutely picks his way through political and cultural controversies, some of
which now seem archaic. A donation of an American edition of Walt
Whitman’s Leaves of grass was rejected it was of ‘an obscene and immoral
character’. He reflects on the importance of the buildings that make up the
Library, not least the world-famous Long Room. It was here in 1998 that this
reviewer met with now former TCD Librarian (1994 to 2002), William Simpson,
to sow the seed that led to one of the Book of Kells, the Gospel of St Mark,
making a rare overseas appearance in Australia
This was the cornerstone of a National Gallery of Australia exhibition of 2000
on mediaeval manuscripts. The Book of Kells, the work of dedicated Irish
monks containing 340 folios, written and decorated on vellum, has been in the
care of TCD since 1653 and has its own special exhibition area in TCD’s Old
Library. It remains one of Ireland's greatest tourist attractions.
The book is well illustrated and sensibly priced. When the book was launched
in Dublin, Dr Edward McParland, the current TCD Pro-Chancellor, described
the Library as ‘the College’s greatest asset’. One wonders how many
Australian vice chancellors would echo such a sentiment in 2015 of their
library.
Colin Steele
Australian National University