JANUARY: bitter weather, better new year resulutions. Up in a national cultural institution in Kildare Street, Dublin, a director has made a promise. "This is not a job to die for."

Dr Pat Donlon of the National Library will be watching the Budget with interest. She has studied the Estimates. The provisional increase in funding for the library is, once again, marginal. As for that promised honeypot for capital projects, the £35 million in EU structural funding, the National Library has tasted only a fraction of it.

Yet the library was the first of the four main institutions to draw up its own strategic plan.

Now running into its "wind up years", as Dr Donlon puts it, the 1992-1997 plan was one of many initiatives she took on her appointment over seven years ago. Her aim was to transform the institution from a mausoleum of crumbling manuscripts into a late 20th century database linked to the information superhighway. The document has met some of its stated targets, and all of its objectives in specific cases - "refurbishment, planning new developments, for instance." Yet certain key commitments have not been fulfilled, and a submission for £5 million in EU funds has been rejected. The library has received £1 million to date. The bulk has been given to the National Museum.

The Department of Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht was, and is, very preoccupied with the £35 million National Museum move to Collins Barracks, the £4.5 million transfer of the Chester Beatty library, after the EU presidency, to Dublin Castle's Clock Tower, and with the new Film Board and exciting developments in the film and music industry.

The National Library does not appear to figure high on its agenda.

However, Dr Donlon also has a series of other serious preoccupations. She is charged with the care of five million heritage items, around 65 staff, buildings in Kildare Street, a new Temple Bar photographic archive, and the provision of a public service which, she says, is still not ideal. She has plans for improved cataloguing and access, digital reproduction of photographs, and fundraising at home and abroad. Her official role also involves lecturing, and active membership of 15 national and international bodies, including the Library Council of Ireland, the Chester Beatty library, the Irish Manuscripts Commission, the Worth Library, the European Consortium of Research Libraries.

IN A personal capacity, but directly linked to her professional work, she sits on seven bodies including vice presidency of the Royal Irish Academy, membership of the European Cultural Foundation, judge of the Gulbenkian Museum Awards, the Ford Heritage Awards, and the Stamp Design Committee. Her latest challenge is her appointment as Chief Herald and Genealogical Officer. All on one breakfast and with no deputy to assist her.

Last year, the unexpected occurred: with no history of heart disease, no bad habits like smoking, Dr Donlon went for a medical check up. She was booked in for a heart by pass. This was a serious, life threatening, operation. The one identifiable cause was stress.

Months later, she is back at work and facing an uncertain future.

"I think that the problem is that we believed, understood and accepted that this plan had government support, albeit a different government." (The plan was initially approved in principle by a Fianna Fail led administration.) "For the first time, we thought, there was official sanction for the optimum development of the institution over a five year period."

IT WAS not to be. "Some changes have been made" she says, anxious to be optimistic Security was the priority then, and has been significantly upgraded. The physical housing of the collections has also been improved.

"When that plan was launched, we didn't have a computer in the institution." The library now has an on line public access catalogue (OPAC), and "a degree of progress" in terms of automation. "We have a map conservation facility, material has been saved from destruction," she says. "With the support of the Office of Public Works (OPW), and a variety of funding sources, an additional area has been provided at the rear of Kildare Street for technical services, including microfilming.

"The Temple Bar national photographic archive is almost finished," she continues. But now the downside. She asks, with reference to resources "will we be ready to open? It will require extra staff.

"Here in Kildare Street, we still have to close two mornings a week." Plans to digitise, and therefore preserve and conserve visual material, and to move on line are "costly in an area which no government likes manpower," she says. Temporary cataloguers, employed to deal with a considerable backlog of material, have had to be let go under the public service embargo. Material is still listed in three different catalogues.

"These are problems that could be addressed very quickly, but it needs money. Already, we are beginning to feel the strain and a small backlog is building ups again. It is terribly frustrating. Just when we felt that we could look forward. Ultimately, the public suffers. Lack of accessibility to the heritage is a form of censorship.

"A national library in this country should be at the apex, should be a role model, should be a force for good in devising a national policy. In its 117- 118 years of existence, the National Library has never been adequately funded and its role has never been appreciated. Co operative cross border projects' like Newsplan Ireland, designed to provide conservation quality microfilms of all Irish newspapers before they disintegrate, require a lot of effort and commitment which transcends the physical building.

"There is not a lot of sympathy for this," she says. In March, she is due to chair a task group of European library directors on behalf of the European Commission to examine the implications of electronic communication, including on line databases, CD Roms and the legal and other implications of such technological developments. "Yet such international co operation and research, which will benefit Ireland, is almost sneered at and perceived as gallivanting."

ANNUAL budget increases for the cultural institutions have always been on a small percentage basis. "The reality is that whenever have achieved, and never will achieve, the work we need to like this. There has to be an acceptance of once off funding for the projects to which we are committed, if we are to fulfil our role."

So I ask the obvious questions. How long will she remain in her job if things don't improve? She concedes that she has given herself a deadline, but says that is a private matter. Well then, what could she do if she received a once off grant equivalent, say, to the £10 million now allocated annually to Teilifis na Gaeilge? Dr Donlon catches her breath. "We could really transform this institution for everybody... and for all time." Then it would be a library worth living for.