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#34 Let Us Be Your Guide

Front cover from Guide to the Library of Trinity College Dublin (1968)

Image 1 of 23

Nearly all libraries produce a guide on how to navigate their buildings and collections, and we have been no exception – at least, in the past. Currently, we don’t really have *physical* guides to the Library, in English at least; we do have a small one produced for our Irish speakers. Instead, we currently rely on our website and online presence to inform our readers… something we may need to revisit, as users often seem to want to have something in their hand they can use, and a website on their phone won’t necessarily cut it.

This lengthy preamble serves as an introduction to the Guide above. Our current readers can note that undergrads were not given borrowing privileges as a matter of course, and had to register and could only borrow from two specific collections. And you thought only being able to borrow LEN-designated books was bad now!

The other aspect that jumps out is suggested by the map which forms our main image, and shows that, despite the New Library opening, how much our collections overflowed into other locations. Modern languages were in the 1937 Reading Room. A medical library was in the Biochemistry Building. The Lecky Library of books was in the Museum Building. Also prominent were temporary prefab huts by the side of the Old Library to hold the Science collections. You can just see the edge of those in this image we featured before, at the top left:

Image by Eugene Kelly

…and also in this aerial photo of Dublin:

… look note other temporary non-Library buildings in Fellows’ Garden-as-was, labelled as a lecture theatre on our plan. No wonder College started planning more building almost before the Berkeley’s concrete was set!