Trinity College Dublin (TCD) has confirmed that it is revisiting some aspects of the €90 million conservation project of its 18th century Old Library which houses the Book of Kells “in light of current inflationary pressures”.
TCD has confirmed the review of aspects of the Old Library Redevelopment Project as new figures show that the Book of Kells exhibition along with income from the Old Library shop and guided tours generated €16.7 million in revenues for the college last year.
The €16.7 million is a tenfold increase on the €1.6 million generated in 2021 as tourists flocked back to the Book of Kells exhibition last year with the lifting of Covid-19 restrictions.
Book of Kells visitors
A TCD spokeswoman said on Friday that last year, 740,000 visited the exhibition featuring the 9th-century gospel manuscript, Book of Kells compared to 78,000 during the Covid-19 hit 2021.
The spokeswoman said that the Book of Kells exhibition is performing strongly in 2023 “and we are expecting an increase in numbers”.
Enabling projects are continuing to facilitate the Old Library Development Project including a conservation-led decant of all the collections to secure storage.
The TCD spokeswoman said that “in light of the current inflationary pressures, affecting all building projects nationally, we are revisiting some aspects of this long-term conservation project”.
She said: “We will be in a position to update on budget and timeline once that review is complete”. The spokeswoman said that the “incredibly painstaking” work of moving 350,000 Early Printed books and a total of 700,000 collection items - or 10.5 kilometres of books - continues.
Seventy five people are engaged in the project and one by one, each book is cleaned with a specialised vacuum, measured, electronically tagged and linked to a catalogue record, before being safely relocated to a climate-controlled storage facility.
Cleaning project
Providing an update on the project, the TCD spokeswoman said: “By the end of April, six km of books have been removed from the Old Library, 60% of the overall project.
“Readers will continue to have access to all material in an Interim Research Collections Study Centre in the Ussher Library during the lifetime of the building conservation project."
The spokeswoman said that notable examples of the Old Library include Ireland’s only copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio, the first edition of Shakespeare’s collected plays published in 1623 which formed the centrepiece of an exhibition in the Library of Trinity College Dublin last month.
Along with the decanting of the books, TCD is also progressing with three other projects to facilitate the conservation project - an interim reading room where researchers can consult the Old Library's collection; a temporary immersive exhibition of the Long Room and Book of Kells and testing and verification of a fire suppression system.
The project has already generated international media interest with the project featuring in the Financial Times, The Guardian, New York Times, BBC World News, the German national broadcaster ZDF.
Work started on the project in April of last year and when the substantial works do commence, the Old Library will be closed to visitors for at least three years.
