National Library of Ireland Annual Report 2013
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National Library of Ireland Annual Report 2013 1 Report of the Board of the National Library of Ireland for the year ended 31 December 2013 To the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht pursuant to Section 36 of the National Cultural Institutions Act, 1997 Published by National Library of Ireland, Dublin ISSN 2009-5813 (digital) © Board of the National Library of Ireland, 2014 National Library of Ireland, Kildare Street, Dublin 2, Ireland Telephone: +353 1 603 0200 Fax: +353 1 676 6690 Email: [email protected] Website: www.nli.ie Table of Contents 1.0 About the NLI 4 2.0 Chairman’s Foreword 5 3.0 Acting Director’s Introduction 6 4.0 Overview of Key Areas of Work 2013 8 4.1 Visitor Numbers 9 4.2 Collections 11 4.3 Exhibitions 15 4.4 Events and Outreach 22 5.0 The NLI’s Work with External Partners 25 6.0 Resources 27 7.0 Supporting the NLI 28 8.0 Board Member Attendance 29 9.0 Donors 2013 31 About the NLI The National Library of Ireland (NLI), located on Dublin’s Kildare Street beside the Houses of the Oireachtas, was founded in 1877. It collects and makes available the shared memory of the Irish nation at home and abroad, caring for more than 10 million items, including books, newspapers, manuscripts, prints, drawings, ephemera, photographs and, increasingly, digital media. From 14th century Gaelic manuscripts to 21st century websites, from the papers of Yeats and Joyce to the works of contemporary Irish writers, the NLI is the repository of Ireland’s national written heritage. It is also the guardian of personal histories in the form of vast archives of letters, photographs and diaries, and family history sources such as the Roman Catholic parish registers. The Office of the Chief Herald and the National Photographic Archive are also part of the National Library. Every year, the NLI welcomes hundreds of thousands of visitors to its magnificent reading rooms, its ground- breaking exhibition on WB Yeats, its programmes for families and lifelong learners and its free genealogy advice service. Increasingly, its magnificent collections are being made available online to people worldwide, and the NLI has an award-winning presence on Twitter, Facebook and the Flickr Commons. Further information about the NLI is available at www.nli.ie. 3 Chairman’s Foreword In presenting this inaugural annual review of the activities of the National Library of Ireland in 2013, I am conscious of the many changes that have occurred in the library and heritage world in the past few decades, and indeed of the changes that are to come. In this second decade of the 21st century, the National Library of Ireland finds itself operating in a transitional context where technology has radically transformed the creation and distribution of knowledge, but where the traditional means of knowledge distribution, mostly paper based, still flourish. The NLI must find ways of acquiring and preserving both traditional print and manuscript media as well as digital media. It must fulfil its duty to the public which owns and pays for it, and contribute to the cultural and economic life of the nation, by making its collections as accessible as possible in its reading rooms and exhibitions. It must also make its collections available online to the world at large via its website and online partners and portals. And above all it must continue to collect and evolve to meet the demands of new generations. In this context I am happy to note that visitor numbers, both to the Library’s premises in Kildare Street and Temple Bar, and to its website grew substantially, which bears out the high level of public interest in the services and exhibitions on offer from the Library. I am pleased to note that the NLI became the first Irish cultural heritage body to engage in a partnership with the Google Cultural Institute to show three online photographic exhibitions on the Institute’s portal. This partnership was possible because of the substantial work that has been carried out by the Library on digitising the collections in its care. I am looking forward to a substantial ingest of digitised visual Decade of Commemoration materials to the NLI’s own digital repository in the coming years. As Chairman of the Board of the Library I have become very aware of the huge challenges it faces, in terms of meeting the needs of the digital information age, and of the considerable potential of its collections to enrich the cultural, social, economic and educational life of Ireland. I am therefore concerned to note the resource difficulties outlined by the Acting Director. The last five years have, of course, been difficult for everyone in Ireland, not least for cultural institutions. The country is now emerging from recession, and I am hopeful that increased levels of funding will be made available to support the crucial work done by the NLI in collecting, preserving and providing access to Ireland’s written heritage. Finally, on behalf of the Board and myself I would like to acknowledge the enormous contribution made by Ms Fiona Ross in her four years as Director of the National Library. Fiona took on the Directorship of the Library in 2010, and was an inspirational leader in a period of severe cutbacks in both staff and finances. We wish her every success in her future career. I would like also to thank the staff who worked with Fiona for all their efforts and dedication during her term which resulted in the achievements outlined below. David Harvey Chairman NLI 5 Acting Director’s Introduction 2013 was a busy year in the National Library of Ireland. We had over a quarter of a million visitors through our doors, representing a 42 per cent increase on the previous year, and an 85 per cent increase since 2009. Online visitor numbers continued to grow, with 7.3 million interactions across our website and Flickr Commons profile, and 20,000 followers on Facebook and Twitter. Throughout 2013, we continued to grow our collections: 5,800 books were bought or received under legal deposit, including both rare items and newly published material. Sixty collections of manuscripts, prints and drawings, and photographs were purchased, and 281 collections were donated. Notable highlights of our work on collecting included the donation by renowned cartoonist Martyn Turner of approximately 900 cartoons to the NLI; and the acquisition of the Haberer Heaney Collection and the Fishamble Theatre archive. We completed our work on cataloguing both the Udolphus Wright (Abbey Theatre) collection, which we had purchased in 2002, and the John Devoy papers. Of course, in addition to visiting our magnificent Reading Room and accessing our collections, many people come to the NLI for our ongoing programmes of exhibitions and events. Ten major exhibitions were staged during 2013, attracting 170,840 visitors. We were honoured to host Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of President John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy – and her family – for the opening of the ‘JFK: Homecoming’ exhibition, which was a huge success. The Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Jimmy Deenihan TD, officiated at a number of our events during the year, while many wonderful authors, artists, historians and genealogists participated. Our outreach work continued apace during 2013. We were actively involved in The Gathering and – once again – ran a very popular programme of activities for Culture Night. Our Poetry Aloud competition – through which we work with post-primary schools throughout Ireland – enjoyed continued success, with over 1,500 students competing last year. Despite these many achievements, however, 2013 was a difficult time for the NLI. Since 2008, we have suffered from year-on-year funding cutbacks, and we now receive 44 per cent less funding than we did five years ago. Coupled with decreasing numbers of staff and increasing demand for our services, this means we are being squeezed from all sides. While we are delighted to have ever higher numbers of visitors to the NLI, we have fewer and fewer resources with which to serve them. Our full-time staff numbers have decreased by 23 per cent since 2008, and we now find ourselves in the unpleasant situation of assessing whether it will be possible to maintain certain services. The financial and political uncertainties of recent years have taken their toll on the day-to-day work of the NLI. A particular challenge for us is the outdated and inadequate storage conditions in which the Library’s collections are housed. We do not have the resources to move our precious collections into 21st century, secure, waterproof, fireproof and environmentally appropriate buildings off-site. As a result, much of the NLI’s landmark, city-centre space is taken up with storing collections, when it could be opened up to provide more and better public amenities. Another challenge we face is that our ‘purchase power’ – for acquiring new items to add to our collections – has plummeted from where it was in the past. This means we can no longer afford to buy many of the important written heritage items that come up for sale, and they are going elsewhere. As a result of the Government’s ongoing programme of public sector reform, it is proposed that a new governance model will be applied to the NLI and the National Museum of Ireland, whereby statutory advisory 6 councils will operate pro bono in place of our existing boards. The timeline for implementing these changes to our governance model is not yet clear. However we must remain optimistic and hope that increased funding will be made available to us, especially in the context of the Decade of Commemorations which we have now entered.