Update from Librarian and College Archivist to students and staff

7 May 2020

Dear Students and Staff,

Following the government's announcement last Friday, the libraries remain closed. Books that were due to be returned have been automatically renewed to Friday, 22nd May and all fees are waived. Following students' exams and assessments you will want to return your books. To help with this, the Library is working with various organisations, including the Public Libraries, An Post and the Consortium of National and University Libraries (CONUL) to organise book returns nationwide. We will let you know as soon as possible about these arrangements once finalised.

We are particularly mindful of the needs of our students in the second week of exams. The Library's accelerated purchase of e-books following lockdown hopefully went some way to help in your remote study; according to the latest figures, we acquired an additional 340 e-books.

Being equally mindful of the needs of researchers, Siobhán Dunne (Teaching, Research and User Experience) is making a further call this week for the purchase of additional e-books to specifically support researchers in their remote research.

Today we are launching the initiative 'Living in lockdown: archives of the Trinity community during the COVID-19 pandemic' a research project led by Dr Jane Maxwell of Research Collections. It is part of a widening network of COVID-19 projects with the Trinity Long Room Hub, Columbia University and Science Gallery. The website is now launched, inviting College's crowdsourced content. The importance of capturing ‘now’ for our future understanding of society was raised in a letter to the Irish Times I wrote last week.

Finally, on a lighter note, Susie Bioletti  (Preservation and Conservation) reports that the four beehives continue to thrive during lockdown. Situated on top of the Parsons Building, the hives are part of the campus biodiversity plan and are used to raise awareness around pollinators and climate action and have been a focus of student research.

I hope you, your families and your friends remain safe and I wish students well in their exams and assessments.

Best regards,

Helen Shenton FRSA, FIIC
Librarian and College Archivist