Pollard Children's Collection
Unlocking the Treasures of the Long Room
The Pollard Collection consists of over 10,000 historic children’s books from the 17th to the early 20th century, collected over a lifetime by the late Paul Pollard (correctly Mary Pollard, 1922–2005).
One of the most significant of its kind, the Pollard Collection offers enormous opportunities for research and scholarship. A bequest of this type presents all kinds of opportunities, and Trinity is keen to make the most of the collection’s enormous potential, and in particular to open it up not only to scholars, writers and illustrators but also to children.
A generous donation from the UK Trust for TCD of £150,000 has kick-started the fundraising campaign and assist with further funding for: a preservation survey on the collection; the cataloguing and digitisation of the collection; the identification of academic themes for research; the establishment of an M.Phil. and an annual fellow in Children’s Literature; and the founding of the Pollard Annual lecture in Children’s Literature.
The first annual Mary Pollard Memorial lecture, delivered by Ms Jill Shefrin, University of Toronto, takes place on the 2 June 2010.