9.30 a.m.
The library is not open to the public for another half hour, and the mosaic floor in the main hall is being given a good mopping. Lemony smells of cleaning fluid fill the air. The lovely stained-glass windows in the rotunda wall are dotted with the heads of famous writers - Milton, Shakespeare, Cervantes and Goethe - whose venerable faces look on as Peggy Reilly finishes the floor, Berni Medcalfe gets ready to open the shop and Liam Murphy takes up his position at the cloakroom with its 120 lockers ("in the summer there are so many tourists that we run out of lockers and I have to ask people to wait," he notes).
Upstairs in the silent reading room, Mark Hardy, senior library assistant, is organising the roster of library assistants and attendants. Gerry Long (assistant keeper, manuscripts department) is clutching his mobile phone, waiting for a group of 30 students to descend at 10 a.m.
"They are looking at five years of the property supplements of the Irish Independent, The Irish Times and the Evening Herald. It's bedlam. They'll be with us for the next couple of weeks." The reading room, with its wood panelling and attractive reading tables with green-shaded lamps, is looking very bright with its newly painted and refurbished ceiling in varying shades of green.
The wooden shelves stacked with reference books are being given a last going over, to make sure everything is in place before the room fills with readers. The on-line catalogue (which has details of all material owned by the library since 1991) gets a tweaking too, just to see that it is working properly. In the microfilm room, the 45 machines used by researchers to read old parish records and newspapers are also being checked.
9.45 a.m.
The library's director, Brendan O Donoghue, is on walkabout: "I like to walk around so I know what's happening," he says. "It's better than sitting in my office and expecting people to come to me." He retired as secretary of the Department of the Environment last year, and was asked to become director of the library "on a temporary basis": "I knew the library well. I had been a reader here for 20 years. It was an opportunity to fill the gap and do what I could to improve things before a more permanent arrangement could be made." The library has a permanent civil service staff of 70 people and an additional part-time staff of 12. It costs £3 million a year to run.
10 a.m.
We repair to O Donoghue's office as readers stream in to the reading room upstairs. "We cater well for the specialist who has a good idea of what he wants," he muses. "He'll spend at most 15 minutes waiting for his books. The British Library's target is to meet 60 per cent of requests in an hour. We'd have a revolution on our hands if we took that long!"
He is less pleased with what is on offer to the casual visitor: "We have an exhibition room and now there is the shop and the genealogical service. But we should have more. I'd like to have a display area for some of our treasures." Plans for expansion are going ahead. Part of a site adjoining the library, but formerly occupied by NCAD, will now be made available for library use. "We have planning permission and we should have a contractor on site by January."
The library gets a copy of every book published in the 26 counties (last year this amounted to 15,000 volumes) and does its best to purchase everything published in Northern Ireland. "We also try to buy books published in the UK and the US which are of relevance to Ireland," says O Donoghue.
10.30 a.m.
There is an exhibition at the library called Dublin, Urban and Sub- urban and the man who put it together, conservation officer John Farrell, shows me around. We study an artist's impression of a plan for Killiney Hill, made in 1820, showing developers were as keen then as now to get permission to build on this public amenity.
11 a.m.
The library's free genealogy service has proved immensely popular since it started last May, attracting, says senior library assistant Bernard Devany, more than 1,000 people a month.
"Seventy five per cent of our visitors are Americans whose ancestors left Ireland at the time of the Famine. They have hardly any information. It is very hard for us to be able to help them if they can't even tell us the county their ancestor came from," Devany says.
I sit in on a session with professional genealogist Maire MacConghail and a young woman from Seattle called Bridget Byrne who wants more information about her Irish ancestor, Daniel Hayes, born in 1839.
"Luckily we know the place he came from: Tipperary," says MacConghaill. Using a CD ROM of Griffiths Valuation of Ireland, a survey carried out between 1848 and 1864 on property and land, we find Daniel Hayes lived on Pudding Lane in Thurles. Unfortunately, however, the current Archbishop of Cashel and Emly will not allow access to the church records for 40 Tipperary parishes, MacConghail notes, so that source of information is closed.
11.30 a.m.
The library has a delicate screening process in place: "You have to have a reader's ticket for security reasons," explains Brendan O Donoghue. James Harte is in charge of the ticketing system: "Students need a letter from their school or university to show what they need to research here," says Harte. Although "most people come here looking for a book, having tried everywhere else, some students just want to use the reading room as a place to study, and that is not allowed". The system was introduced because "some years ago there were complaints that material was walking out the door," says O Donoghue. "We don't want to discourage people, but we are the custodians of unique and valuable material."
A reader's ticket is not needed to consult newspapers or microfilms. "But if you want to consult books you have to show some ID and fill out a form saying why you are here." Day passes are readily available, and most books "have a bleeper installed" to prevent theft.
Sandra McDermott, senior library assistant, remembers a couple of famous applicants coming in for readers' tickets: "Aidan Quinn and Liam Neeson wanted to do some research when they were in the movie Michael Collins," she recalls. "There was great excitement."
11.45 a.m.
Tom Desmond, library assistant, is supervising the reading room and dealing with today's requests. McDermott takes me behind the scenes to the five floors of book stacks where library assistant Pat Sweeney is hunting to fulfil readers' requests. There are another five floors of books at No 4 Kildare Street. How many books?
"One million," McDermott estimates. She explains that the books stored closest to the reading room are those most often requested: "Irish history, biography, antiquities, popular fiction." There are 19 shelves of books by or about Joyce (that's about 600 books).
We go to the ground floor to the rare books collection, which is kept locked: readers need permission to gain access to these gems, which are either first editions or have rare bindings. I am allowed, briefly, to finger a first edition of Richard Ellmann's biography of Oscar Wilde, and an ornate edition of William Congreve's works in three volumes, bound in green and gold and published in 1761.
When the library was established in 1877, it had two foundation collections: the RDS Library (70,000 books) and the Joly Library (25,000 volumes). The latter was a gift from Dr Jasper Joly, a book collector of Belgian and French extraction. "It was Joly's gift which necessitated the government of the time to set up a National Library," says Donall O Luanaigh, keeper of collections.
12.30 p.m.
The library has a huge collection of some 90,000 prints and drawings, presided over by assistant keeper Colette O'Daly. Most of her day is spent fulfilling requests from publishers. The most popular requests are "scenes of evictions or emigration in Ireland".
For the past two years Colette has also been kept busy with requests for drawings and illustrations relating to 1798: "We have to keep up with the historical centenaries." Thanks to scanning equipment operated by cataloguer Avice-Claire McGovern, many of the prints and drawings in the collection have been scanned on to the computer, so that if material is requested, the originals will not be handled.
1 p.m.
Donall O Luanaigh says the library once had a tea-room, but there is nothing of that sort now, so we all troop out to various eateries. But one amenity the library possesses is the incredibly spacious and lavishly decorated ladies' bathroom. It is more like an old-fashioned powder room, with upholstered, apple-green, armchairs; stained-glass in the doors and beautiful tiles on the floor and walls.
Jim Dunne, who frequently mans the inquiries desk, says: "It has been restored in the period style. American ladies are always complimenting it, saying it's better than the Hilton."
2 p.m.
The library owns "the largest comprehensive collection of newspapers in the country," says Sandra McDermott. We walk through the basement, passing shelves stacked with volumes of newspapers bound in large black binding. The Dublin Chronicle of 1792 is there, The Connaught Telegraph of 1883, The Derry Standard of 1914 and The Irish Catholic (bound in green) of 1942 (many more papers are stored at No 5 Kildare Street).
2.30 p.m.
Onward to what is called the Racquet Hall in Leinster Lane, in the company of library administrative officer Kevin Browne. "This is part of the old Kildare Street Club and we call it the Racquet Hall because it was a squash court," he explains. Security cameras follow our every move, he notes, as we go to meet Sara Smyth and Noel Stapleton of Newsplan. Newsplan, Smyth explains, is a scheme being carried out in conjunction with the British Museum, whereby all the library's holdings of Irish newspapers (dating back to the 1600s) are being filmed in what she describes as "the first concerted effort to conserve newspapers". The scheme only started in Ireland three months ago, and so far "we have done 30 volumes". She reckons it will take 10 years to complete the project.
3.30 p.m.
Periodicals as diverse as Angling Ireland and Boyzone Magazine are stored upstairs in the Racquet Hall. This is also where paperbacks are given a new lease of life by bindery worker, Caroline Byrne, who reinforces the covers with card and linen: "It's a way of prolonging the life of the book by at least five years," she explains. "We do between 160 and 180 books a week."
4 p.m.
We trot over to the Genealogical Office, which nestles beside the Alliance Francaise. The Heraldic Museum there is filled with displays of coats of arms, crests and mottos on plates, glasses and coins. Browne leads me behind the scenes to the Chief Herald's Office, where deputy chief herald Fergus Gillespie, is in the process of granting a coat of arms to Prof Jack Lonergan, a linguist from England who is here with his wife. Prof Lonergan is about to receive his newly emblazoned heraldic patent, a text hand-written in Irish, headed by a coat of arms, specifically designed by consulting herald, Micheal O Comain, and painted by herald painter, Katy Lumsden. Members of the public and corporate bodies, so long as they have an Irish connection, can buy coats of arms at a cost of just over £2,000.
4 p.m.
We breeze into Conservation, on the top floor of the building, where Matthew Cains, conservator, is working his way through the 22,000 items in the map collection. "Each one is unique but they have suffered from handling. They used to be on open access, and people could flip through them at will," he explains. Other problems include creases, tears, stains and even mould. He is currently working on a map from the year 1700, depicting two parishes in Co Galway: Killascobe and Moylough. The painstaking work involves cleaning and washing in de-ionised water, then de-acidifying with a calcium hydroxide wash, then mounting the map on Japanese tissue using pure wheatstarch paste.
4.15 p.m.
"This is where you'll find the 5 per cent of real researchers," says Noel Kissane, assistant keeper in charge of manuscripts, as he leads me into the tranquil haven of the manuscripts reading room. There is only one woman in here right now, but on average the room gets about 30 readers daily, doing research into medieval history, local history or women's history.
4.45 p.m.
The library has between 3,000 and 4,000 unsorted boxes of manuscripts, including estate papers, diaries, writers' materials and the papers of deceased politicians. When I visit the manuscript sorting room, history student Marie Coleman is working through 37 boxes of papers which belonged to Piaras Beaslai: "He was the first person to write a biography of Michael Collins and had a reasonable amount of Collins's papers, including the receipt for Kitty Kiernan's engagement ring," says Coleman. Meanwhile, Gerry Long is cataloguing manuscripts, including a donation of 18th-century deeds relating to property transactions and marriage settlements from Loftus Hall near Fethard, Co Wexford. "It is labour intensive," he sighs. "We input all the details on to the computer." His desk is littered with letters of request, including one from a historian in Yale who is looking for material on the cultural significance of the battle of Waterloo, "We reply to everyone," says Long.
4.50 p.m.
Now is my hour of triumph. We go to the reading room in the main library building and I get to ring the bell to tell the readers it is time to go. "A great honour," Long assures me, as the readers give me grumpy looks and file up to the desk to give back their books.
5.10 p.m.
Activity is hotting up in the main hall. The readers have left, so it's all go to prepare for the book launch. The book in question is Beranger's Antique Buildings of Ireland, with text by Peter Harbison. It is based on an 18th-century sketchbook by Beranger owned by the library, and has been published by Four Courts Press. The library often hosts book launches on Thursdays and Fridays when the reading room is closed at 5 p.m. (it opens until 9 p.m. from Monday to Wednesday).
5.30 p.m.
People are arriving in droves, including the library's previous director, Dr Pat Donlon, and architectural historian, Maurice Craig. Peter Harbison makes his entrance, along with his brother, State pathologist Prof John Harbison, and Sheelagh Harbison, their mother, an active historian.
6 p.m.
Finally the speeches begin and Nicholas Robinson, honorary president of the Irish Architectural Society, gets up to say a few urbane, complimentary words to launch the book. The hall is packed with historians, punters and, now in their civvies having finished work, many of the library's employees - faces shining and smiling, sipping wine, relishing the library's other, after-hours, incarnation.
