Tricentennialberry

How does a 300 year old library make a comeback? By computerizing its catalogue, holding exhibitions and generally trying to make itself noticed in the scholarly world.

Marsh’s Library in Dublin, Ireland was built in 1701 by protestant Archbishop Narcissus Marsh (1638-1713) and it is arguably the oldest public library in all the British Isles. Marsh built the library with his own money twenty years after his arrival in Ireland to become Provost at Trinity College.

One of the reasons that Archbishop Marsh gave for building his library was that when he came to Ireland he was shocked at the fact that there was nowhere for the public to go to read in Dublin. The library in Trinity College was only open to the staff and students and furthermore if a student wanted to use the library a senior member of the staff had to stay in the library with him.

The library‘s collection is housed on the second floor of the building in an effort to keep some of the damp Irish weather from the books. The bottom floor was built as the keeper’s residence. The library contains over 25,000 volumes including about 90 printed before 1501.

"At the end of the Second Gallery are three wired alcoves usually called ‘The Cages.’ These were intended by Marsh for the protection of the smaller more valuable books, although the charming story that readers were locked in these ‘cages’ as a security measure is also part of the Library’s history. Another protective measure was the use of chains on the lower shelves of the bookcases throughout the entire Library. These chains were removed on the advice of the Librarian in the middle of the eighteenth century.”

The library contains volumes by Shakespeare, Chaucer and Molière, and counts among its patrons such notable authors as Jonathon Swift, George Bernard Shaw, Bram Stoker and James Joyce.