Trinity College Library
The Long Room in the Old Library
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| Country | Ireland |
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| Type | Academic library |
| Location | College Street, Dublin 2 |
| Coordinates | 53°20′38″N 6°15′24.5″W / 53.34389°N 6.256806°W |
| Collection | |
| Items collected | Books, journals, newspapers, magazines, sound and music recordings, databases, maps, prints and manuscripts |
| Size | c. 6,000,000 volumes |
| Criteria for collection | Acquisition through purchase, bequest and legal deposit |
| Legal deposit | Republic of Ireland (Copyright and Related Rights Act, 2000) and United Kingdom (Legal Deposit Libraries Act, 2003) |
| Access and use | |
| Access requirements | Staff, graduates (reading privileges only) and students of the university. Other readers admitted under cross-institutional arrangements, or if material is unavailable elsewhere. Old Library and Library Gift Shop open to public |
| Other information | |
| Director | College Librarian and Archivist Helen Shenton |
| Staff | Around 180 |
| Website | http://www.tcd.ie/Library/ |
The Library of Trinity College Dublin serves Trinity College and the University of Dublin. It is the largest library in Ireland and, as a legal deposit or "copyright library", it has rights to receive material published in the Republic of Ireland free of charge; it is also the only Irish library to hold such rights for the United Kingdom. The Library is the permanent home to the famous Book of Kells. Two of the four volumes are on public display, one opened to a major decorated page and the other to a typical page of text. The volumes and pages shown are regularly changed. Members of the University of Dublin also have access to the libraries of Tallaght Hospital and the Irish School of Ecumenics, Milltown.
The Library proper occupies several buildings, four of which are at the Trinity College campus itself, with another part of the Trinity Centre at St. James's Hospital, Dublin:
Further materials are held in storage in Stacks, either in closed access within College or at a book depository in the Dublin suburb of Santry.
The Library began with the founding of Trinity College in 1592. In 1661, Henry Jones presented it with the Book of Kells, its most famous manuscript. James Ussher (1625–56), Archbishop of Armagh, whose most important works were "Veterum Epistolarum Hibernicarum Sylloge" (1632) and "Brittanicarum Ecclesiarum Antiquitates" (1639), left his valuable library, comprising several thousand printed books and manuscripts, to the Library. His complete works were published by the Library in twenty-four volumes.
In 1801, the Library was given legal deposit rights, making it the only library in Ireland to have such rights for the United Kingdom. Starting at 4 pm on Saturday 29 November 2009, the Trinity Students' Union organized a 24-hour sit-in in protest at a reduced book-buying budget, lack of access to books on Sundays, and a proposed reduction of counter services.
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