UCD's redesigned James Joyce Library. Photograph: Richard Hatch
It is a chilly and unwelcoming space, but seeing them, I do realise how much I love libraries. There is a blue-bound book on “The Residue of Ritualised Action”, which claims to explain Neolithic Deposition Practices in the Middle Thames Valley. And a companion volume on Middle Saxon Settlements in the Cambridge Fens by a man called Andrew Mudd . Elsewhere I see a book on the history of violence in the British Empire, which seems a little short for the extent of its subject.
She and the team at UCD explored other libraries to find out what worked and what didn’t. Katherine McSharry, UCD’s cultural heritage director, picks out the Bodleian’s Weston Library in Oxford for the way in which it opens the library up to the community with a cafe and public exhibition centre. “UCD holds the National Folklore Collection,” she explains. “As well as the UCD Archives and Special Collections.
Still, the love letters and break-up letters reveal the course of that love did not always run smooth. “Dear Library,” writes one student. “You’ve been there through thick and thin, and by that I mean I’ve visited you thrice, but I’m only in first year so maybe we can work things out?” “Dear Library,” insists a more frustrated lover. “You really do not understand my needs . That’s why I have been cheating on you and have been studying elsewhere ... Sincerely, your secret bibliophile.
The presence of these indicate another way in which libraries have changed. Once they were said to be the holders of the sum total of the world’s knowledge. Now, it can be argued, that lives in the cloud, freeing up the library to fulfil new roles. “One of the things the students say, again and again, is the library is one of the few places on campus where you can just be,” says Collins. “No one asks you for money, and no one moves you along.