I've always been fascinated with libraries as great wells of thought and research. When I was a student at CU I would occasionally spend the time between classes wandering the Norlin Stacks, feeling the weight of human knowledge press upon me. A great deal of Much Love was written in quiet cubicles on the second floor of the university library, very near the Special Collections room where a reproduction of The Canterbury Tales solemnly resides. There's no greater reminder of the immense history that lies behind us, nor any greater promise of the future that lies before us, than sitting amongst a mountain of books written by our forebears. With that in mind, asdf Publishing's newest on-going series will be about incredible libraries worth visiting.
Recently, when my wife and I had the amazing and unexpected opportunity to visit Ireland, we made a point of touring Trinity College in the heart of Dublin and visiting their amazing library. We landed in Ireland at 7:00 AM after a very restless flight, and between the long lines at customs and the drive into the city to drop off our things, we didn't arrive at the college until the early afternoon. Sleep deprived yet eager to explore, we hopped in line for a quick tour of the university and learned about it's venerable past and present customs. For instance, the college commencement speech is still a two hour ceremony delivered solely in Latin, as per tradition. After the tour we wandered the college museum a bit to examine the stone work and historical exhibits, then we made our way to the Old Library as admission to see the Book of Kells and The Long Room was included in the tour. However, we discovered the line was already out the door and beginning to wrap around the quad in front of the building. We decided to see other sights that afternoon and come back near opening the following morning.
When we we made our way back to the library the next day we were able to walk right in. Immediately inside the doors is a large exhibit devoted to the Book of Kells and two similar works that have survived for centuries. Massive panels describe every conceivable aspect of the book. Expansive timelines depict its storied history surviving fires and viking raids. Geological exhibits display the various raw minerals used to in the making of ancient dyes. Videos demonstrate the process of binding books by hand. Murals explain how the more elaborate illustrations are steeped in symbolism. There's even a section regarding how scribes denoted mistakes in the transcriptions so that readers could ignore them. Some pages in the book have been essentially crossed out in their entirety and rewritten. That made me feel a whole lot better about my own typos. I have the luxury of deleting them as soon as they are discovered; they don't persist for the next millennium.
From there we entered the viewing room of the Book of Kells itself. It's on display in the center of the room underneath a great sheet of glass. Crowds gather around and politely jostle their way to the front in order to examine the book just a few inches away. Each day the librarians turn the page so that every visit provides a unique view of the book. My wife and I took our turn at the front of the line and then continued on, grateful for the chance to be so close to history.
From there we wound up a brief staircase and entered The Long Room. This was the truly impressive portion of the library for me. The room itself is 63.7 meters long and stands 14.2 meters tall. It has to be so enormous because it houses 200,000 of the oldest books ever to be printed in Ireland and Britain. A government act in 1801 designated the library at Trinity College as a 'copyright library,' which entitles it to have a copy of every book ever published on the two islands. In order to accommodate so many works of literature, the shelves were not arranged by title, author, or date published. Instead, they are organized by size and weight. The dozens of cases are separated into fifteen shelves, each supporting a row of books slightly smaller than those below. There's a certain intellectual whimsy to housing an immeasurable wealth of human knowledge in an assortment devoid of any sane way to access it. It's like learning for the sake of learning without any intent to apply the lesson.
At the end of each shelf stands the marble bust of a philosopher from either the classical or early modern era. There are a total of 38 such busts, and I stood awhile in front of those whose works I'd read in my education. I especially took the time to marvel at the immensity of Plato's rendering, having recently read that, in addition to philosophy, he was renowned in his day for his wrestling ability. Along the central hall of The Long Room are various artifacts that have been bequeathed to the library over the years, including a gorgeous harp in the style of the Irish coat of arms. All together, the library at Trinity College is a monument to its nation's rich history and a marvel of literature in its own right.