2022 will be a year to remember for the Library of Trinity College Dublin.  The monumental task of decanting the Library collections commenced last Spring as part of the Old Library Redevelopment Project.

All of the Library’s Research Collections housed in the Old Library are being transferred to special storage. This means removing 350,000 Early Printed books and a total of 700,000  collection items as part of the Library collections. Readers will continue to have access to all material in an Interim Research Collections Study Centre during the lifetime of the building conservation project.

The decant, led by the Library team, is a massive operation, with more than 50 Library staff assisted by over 25 project assistants. Significant care and consideration goes into moving a collection of this scale and the dedication of the Library team is impressive.

This is one of the largest decants of a heritage building in Ireland. As part of the decant process, each book is carefully cleaned with a specialised vacuum, measured, electronically tagged and linked to an online catalogue record, before being safely relocated to a climate-controlled storage facility.

Minister of State for Heritage and Electoral Reform, Malcolm Noonan visited the Old Library in October to see at close quarters the monumental task.

The Old Library Redevelopment Project is a transformative undertaking and is ensuring this 18^th century Old Library building and its collections are conserved for the next century.

National and international media have also captured the once in a lifetime conservation project including the just published Financial Times, The Guardian, New York Times,  BBC World News, the German national broadcaster ZDF and France 2.

For more information on the Old Library Redevelopment Project see Old Library Redevelopment Project – Trinity College Dublin (tcd.ie).