An Irish National Treasure Gets Set for a Long-Needed Restoration

DUBLIN — The Lengthy Room, with its imposing oak ceiling and two ranges of bookshelves laden with a few of Eire’s most historic and priceless volumes, is the oldest a part of the library in Trinity School Dublin, in fixed use since 1732.

However that exceptional document is about to be disrupted, as engineers, architects and conservation consultants embark on a 90 million euro, or $95 million, program to revive and improve the school’s Outdated Library constructing, of which the Lengthy Room is the principle half.

The library, visited by as many as one million folks a 12 months, had been needing repairs for years, however the 2019 fireplace at Notre Dame cathedral in Paris was an pressing reminder that it wanted to be protected, in line with these concerned within the conservation effort.

“We already knew that the Outdated Library wanted work due to issues with the constructing,” mentioned Prof. Veronica Campbell, who initiated the venture. “After we noticed Notre Dame burning, we realized, ‘Oh, my God, we have to do one thing now!’”

A lot of the trouble will probably be centered on conserving the historic labored wooden that makes up a lot of the library’s inside and the frames of its home windows, in addition to enhancing fireproofing and environmental controls wanted to guard the precious e-book assortment.

Confronted with the instance of Notre Dame, and the conclusion that one thing related might occur to an Irish nationwide treasure, the federal government pledged €25 million, with the school and personal donors including €65 million extra.

Work began in April, and in October 2023, the Outdated Library’s doorways will near guests for a minimum of three years because it strikes into full gear.

Within the meantime, guests are nonetheless coming in droves to the library, Dublin’s second hottest attraction for abroad vacationers (the Guinness brewery is first). Among the many treasures on view is the E-book of Kells — an exquisitely crafted ninth-century gospel that’s the best surviving relic of Eire’s early Christian golden age.

This month, Catalina Gomez, 50, a self-professed bibliophile vacationing from Spain, stood gazing on the Lengthy Room’s barrel-vaulted ceiling, towering 48 toes above her, and the parade of sleek home windows, arcades and galleries lined with leather-bound books.

“As quickly as I got here in, I used to be amazed to see an area like this,” mentioned Ms. Gomez, a authorized official. “I’ve been to many aged libraries all over the world, however I’ve by no means seen something so spectacular.”

She added, “It’s making me really feel very emotional.”

Helen Shenton, Trinity’s library director, likes to focus on the options of the Lengthy Room that may have such an impact on guests. She stood within the door of the room just lately and pointed to the galleries and cabinets slanting off right into a vanishing level, 213 toes away on the far finish. “It’s such an attractive perspective,” she mentioned. “And it’s Eire’s entrance room as a result of each visiting head of state comes right here.”

Ms. Shenton mentioned she had twice hosted Joseph R. Biden Jr. on the library, the primary time when he was vp (“he got here in 20 large black automobiles with Secret Service folks”) and a second when he was a personal citizen once more (“he simply walked down right here by himself”).

Many Irish followers of “Star Wars” additionally observe the robust resemblance between the Lengthy Room and the Jedi Archive, portrayed in CGI within the movie “Assault of the Clones,” the place a younger Obi-Wan Kenobi looked for an elusive planetary system. Lucasfilm, which had not sought any picture rights, denied there was any connection.

Ian Lumley, a heritage officer at An Taisce, a nongovernmental group that promotes the conservation of Eire’s constructed tradition, mentioned that preservation of the Outdated Library was essential given its worldwide prominence — and its storied historical past.

“Again within the 18th century, Trinity was the college of the Irish Enlightenment,” he mentioned, an alma mater to writers and thinkers like Edmund Burke, Oliver Goldsmith and Jonathan Swift.

“These folks would have used that library in the way in which trendy college students use the brand new libraries,” he mentioned. “The ambiance and books within the Lengthy Room are so particular that it’s very important nothing must be misplaced.”

The conservation effort — informally named “The Nice Decant” — began on April 1, when the primary tome, Quantity 1 of Reeves’s “Historical past of English Legislation,” printed in London in 1869, was taken from its place on shelf 1.1., within the Lengthy Room’s higher gallery, which is closed to vacationers. The e-book was dusted with a specifically modified vacuum cleaner, it was measured, its bodily situation was famous, and its particulars have been checked in opposition to the Lengthy Room’s catalog, written in 1872.

The e-book was then labeled with a radio-frequency identification tag and put in a bar-coded field — the primary of greater than 700,000 books, manuscripts, busts and different artifacts that will probably be relocated from the Outdated Library to a climate-controlled, off-campus storage facility.

When the books are all gone, specialists will go to work on the Lengthy Room, upgrading customer services, repairing harm and shoring up defenses in opposition to 4 age-old enemies: time, damp, air pollution and, most urgent, fireplace.

The current fireplace defenses have relied on hand-held extinguishers.

Ms. Shenton, the library director, mentioned new applied sciences — probably involving water-misting programs, moderately than sprinklers — would intention to suppress potential fires with out doing an excessive amount of harm to the books. A contractor is being sought to construct a “burn room” — a precise mannequin of the Lengthy Room and its contents — to be ignited so specialists can research one of the simplest ways to carry again the flames.

To sluggish the inevitable lengthy decay of the books, and to guard them from mud and acidic particles seeping in from metropolis visitors, new microthin clear covers, or “slip circumstances,” are being designed for every quantity.

“We’ll must take away one e-book from every shelf to make up for the additional thickness,” mentioned John Gillis, Trinity’s chief e-book conservator. “Properly, that’s what we negotiated with the librarians — one e-book per shelf. It might find yourself being two.” He lowered his voice conspiratorially: “I’m a conservator. Librarians are our enemy. We are saying, ‘Don’t contact that previous e-book!’ and so they wish to let folks open it and browse it!”

Two studying rooms, hidden away at both finish of the Lengthy Room, will probably be relocated to the basement of the fashionable Ussher Library close by, and students will nonetheless have the option summon Lengthy Room books from off-campus storage.

To protect the vacationer expertise for so long as potential — a key supply of school earnings — the cabinets most seen to guests would be the final to be cleared. The E-book of Kells and different valuable artifacts will probably be quickly displayed within the faculty’s 18th-century Printing Home till an enhanced exhibition house is prepared beneath the upgraded Lengthy Room.

There, says Ms. Shenton, shut consideration should be paid to the damp: The japanese half of Trinity’s campus was as soon as a tidal marsh.

“The rationale the Lengthy Room was constructed on the primary flooring was as a result of we’ve numerous underground streams right here, and a excessive water desk,” she mentioned. “When we’ve got to mow the cricket pitch, we are able to’t do it at excessive tide as a result of we’re so near sea degree.”

For the subsequent few months, the one glimpse that guests can have of The Nice Decant will probably be a couple of shadowy figures excessive up within the Lengthy Room’s gallery, unshelving, processing and boxing books.

Among the many venture assistants is Kayleigh Ferguson, 28, from Syracuse, N.Y., a certified librarian who took the work as a facet job whereas learning for a doctorate in Maynooth College, close to Dublin.

Requested if she favored her new work station, excessive within the picturesque gallery, surrounded by aromatic previous books, she laughed.

“I don’t complain,” she mentioned.