The Trinity Centre for the Book Mark Faulkner, Director at the Trinity Centre for the Book shares how this inspiring Centre is celebrating Trinity’s diverse collections and expertise by delving into the profound influence of books on education, culture, and society T rinity is famous the world over for the Book of Kells, with over 600,000 visitors a year coming to see the world’s most famous medieval manuscript. But this luminous codex is just one, albeit magnificent, element of Trinity’s collections of books and manuscripts. These collections are, uniquely, coupled with a concentration of research expertise on the history of the Book that is unparalleled on the island of Ireland. It was recognition of these distinctive strengths that led to the establishment of the new Trinity Centre for the Book, launched by the Provost in the Old Library in April this year. The Centre grows out of a conviction that the Book is one of society’s most important technologies. Through its use of image, layout and the written word, it has played a key role in communicating knowledge and lived experience across time and place for millennia. Learning to read, and to interact with books, is a key part of education, from the toddler read to by a parent, the primary school student learning their letters in first class, to university students and adult learners grappling with elaborate presentations of complex data. Writing continues to evolve, as the development of new non-alphabetic symbols like emojis and the emergence of AI-driven content generation engines like ChatGPT shows. We believe that contemporary society cannot be fully understood or bettered without an understanding of the function, status and potential of the Book as a tool for social organisation and development. Trinity is an obvious place to foreground the Book’s importance. Trinity’s collections are exceptionally wide ranging, spanning millennia, and include over 600 medieval manuscripts, as well as hundreds of books from the earliest phase of printing and reach all the way to the present day, with librarians accessioning digital records of life in lockdown Trinity makes a 13th-century masterpiece globally accessible during COVID-19. They encompass internationally significant specialist collections, like the Pollard Collection of Children’s Books and the 18th-century Dutch Fagel family library, alongside archives of major authors like Samuel Beckett and important publishers like the Cuala Press. Trinity is also home to the UK Legal Deposit collection for Ireland, and is an Irish Legal Deposit Library. These deep collections – more than six million printed volumes in total – mean there is exceptional scope for groundbreaking research on the Book. Trinity’s researchers also have unparalleled expertise in this work, producing over a thousand books and articles on the Book in the last ten years. This expertise encompasses conservators, archivists, librarians and digital photographers, who, in the Library, research, preserve and share the collections with readers from across the world. It also includes academic staff across English, Art History, Modern Languages, Classics, History, Religions, Education, and Computer Science, plus students, undergraduate, masters and PhD’s across these disciplines, many of whom conduct research on the Library’s collections as part of their studies. Books and book-making are also a key part of Trinity’s inclusivity and widening participation strategies, especially through the Trinity Access Programmes’ Bookmarks project, where primary school children produce their own books with expert help. This track record and collective expertise makes Trinity a world-leader in the field of the history of the Book.
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