302 THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF IRELAND. 



THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF IRELAND. 



The Royal Dublin Society's Library was taken over by the State in 1877, 

 and re-named the National Library of Ireland. The Library had been 

 explicitly a Public Library, free to respectable persons, introduced by 

 members of the Dublin Society, since 1836, when a Parliamentary Commis- 

 sion on the Society had recommended that its Library should be made the 

 National Library of Ireland. Implicitly the Library had probably been 

 free on the same terms since ihe beginning of the century, for the Minutes 

 of the Library Committee include references to the constant presence of 

 strangers in the Reading Room; and Stewart's Dublin Almanack of 1820, 

 page 181, under "Dublin Society," has the following entry: — "DEPART- 

 MENTS OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. — The Library, on introduction to the Hbra- 

 rian." 



From 1877 to 1900 the Library was administered by the Department of 

 Science and Art. In 1900 (with the Museum and other Institutions of 

 Science and Art in Dublin) it passed to the administration of the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland. The Library is 

 under the superintendence of twelve Trustees, of whom eight are re-elected 

 annually by the Royal Dublin Society, while four are appointed by the Lord 

 Lieutenant of Ireland. The sum granted for book purchase is ;^ 1,000 a 

 year. This has been supplemented by a temporary addition, to last five 

 years, of £^300 annually. The officials are — a Librarian, A First, and a 

 Second Assistant Librarian, and twelve library-attendants, these last cor- 

 responding to the junior library assistants of the public libraries of England 

 and America. 



Though founded in 1877, it was not until 1890 that the Library entered 

 its new building, which is still unfinished. The architect, the late Sir 

 Thomas Deane, formed his plan in constant consultation with Mr. William 

 Archer, F.R.S. The result is a building which, with some faults, is for its 

 size one of the very best in Great Britain and Ireland. Its special points, 

 perhaps, are : the isolation of the large Central Reading Room (shelved to 

 receive a large number of books, which are absolutely free to the public 

 without intervention), and the adoption of the stack system of book-cases 

 in the book-store. A hydraulic lift connects the basement of the book-store 

 with the attic and all intermediary floors. 



The books are minutely classified according to subject on the shelves by 

 the so-called Decimal system, invented and developed by Mr. Melvil Dewey, 

 an eminent American Librarian. The essential merit of this classification 

 is that every new book goes to reinforce the books on the same subject 

 already in the Library. A new book on Infinitesim.als is so marked that it 

 goes to the place on the shelves where other books on Infinitesimals are — • 

 not merely to " Mathematics," not merely to " The Calculus." A new life of 

 Cromwell joins other books on Cromwell, a new book on Cashmere goes to 

 laooks on Cashmere, not merely Travel, or Asia, or India ; the last book on 



