Courtney McGrailCourtney McGrail visits a hidden gem in the heart of Dublin city
The Central Catholic Library on Dublin’s Merrion Square is a treasure trove of history and culture powered by the dedication of its librarians and members.
Superficially, it appears as a normal terraced building on the south of Merrion Square. However, stepping through its little red door into the beautiful building, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the volume of its offerings, with its shelves stocked full of books.
With approximately 57,000 books, the Central Catholic Library is “open to everyone to whom we can be of service”, says librarian Dr Teresa Whitington. “There’s no requirement to be a Catholic to use the library.”
With its high ceilings, old-fashioned style of architecture and priceless literary offerings, stepping into the rooms here is like walking straight onto a movie set.
In fact, there was a film made here about a year and a half ago, “and sometimes we get student films, that kind of thing. There was also a documentary that RTÉ made on Ireland’s contribution to mission, and they used images from some of our books and some shots of the reading room as well,” says Teresa.
The library was founded in 1922 by Fr Stephen Browne SJ during the Civil War and was originally on Westmoreland Street. It moved then to Hawkin’s Street beside the Theatre Royal where the library’s collection grew and grew.
However, when a fire broke out, two valuable collections – the Healy Collection and the works on sacred art and archaeology – were almost completely destroyed and the library was closed for two months. The Merrion Square building was purchased in 1933 to allow for the growth of the library’s collection.
“We have a very good collection of periodicals – they go back to the early 19th Century,” Teresa said. These cover a very broad range in a number of languages and are a valuable resource for anyone studying the history of religion in Ireland and elsewhere. “We have a nice collection of Catholic school yearbooks,” she says. “Our oldest book dates from the 16th Century and we have 1,200 books printed before 1850.”
Interest
Being a specialist library, the Central Catholic Library handles one particular area of interest – religion, particularly Catholicism – but offers books on Islam, Judaism and other world religions, with the spirituality section being the most popular. “I suppose current events influence what people are conscious of and aware of and want to read about,” says Whitington, explaining how interest in books on Islam increased following the events of 9/11 and is still a current issue today.
Researching and ordering books monthly, the library aims to keep up to date with topical issues and debates, and even added new sections to its unique cataloguing system to cater for new Church debates, such as the role of women in the Church, the Church and the environment, refugees and asylum-seekers in Ireland.
“We try to supply what is unique,” says Teresa and that is what this library is – unique, down to the cataloguing system that Fr Browne created, believing the cataloguing of religion in the Dewey Decimal System to be too restrictive for the scope of his project.
Divided into three sections – a lending section, a loan collection and a reference library – some of the library’s best literary features include a collection of Catholic encyclopaedias. The first edition came out between 1907 and 1911, and two subsequent editions, including the New Catholic Encyclopaedia have roughly contemporary news including Vatican II and a subsequent edition that came out called the New Catholic Encyclopaedia Second Edition which covers events up to the papacy of John Paul II.
“It has supplements going up to the 1980s but it began in 1967,” says Teresa easing another heavy edition from a shelf above a finely crafted fireplace, “and this is the second edition – it’s 2003 and this is the Encyclopaedia of Religion, which is all world religions and is quite nice to have as well.”
As the library was founded in a period of Celtic renaissance, Fr Browne took a keen interest in general literature so, in the literature section in the reading room there is a French section, an Italian section with books on Dante and a Spanish section with Don Quixote. Fr Browne had a thirst for knowledge and “he was very interested in the other Celtic languages so we have some books in Breton for instance”, says Teresa. “In the Irish collection there are books going as far back as 1944 written in the old Gaelic typeface she explains.
{{Fr Browne had a thirst for knowledge and was very interested in the other Celtic languages.î
Among the meticulously preserved collections, upstairs there is a collection of approximately 12 travel guides bound in vellum dating back to the 18th Century. In this room, the air is permeated with the smell of old books that adds to the serene atmosphere and the sense of being awed by the history and the power of knowledge held in the aged pages of the books.
The Central Catholic Library offers access to pamphlets, periodicals, journals and books made precious by the rare information they possess. The library has about 300 members and is hoping to extend its reach by participating in such events as Heritage Week and Culture Night.
Although most subscribers are in Dublin, “we’re open to the nations – anybody in the country who wants to support the library as an important Catholic institution”, says honorary librarian and The Irish Catholic books editor, Peter Costello.
In a world where Kindles and e-readers are changing reading and literature, this library preserves and protects written art, culture and history in its purest most lasting form.
More information can be found at www.catholic library.ie or by contacting the library on 01 676 1264.