UCD LIBRARY CULTURAL HERITAGE COLLECTIONS
Welcome to the UCD Library Cultural Heritage Collections blog. Discover and explore the historical treasures housed within our Archives, Special Collections, National Folklore Collection and Digital Library
Following his untimely passing in December 2012, the personal library of the poet and critic Dennis O'Driscoll was bequeathed to University College Dublin. His wife, the poet Julie O'Callaghan, facilitated delivery of the extensive collection to UCD Library in 2017. The lion's share of O'Driscoll's library now resides in UCD Special Collections where it forms …
How well will this university look, as a university in, say, fifty years? So wrote Lance Wright in the Architects' Journal in April 1973. So....how do you think the university looks? Or how has the campus changed since your time at UCD? Why don't you come and tell us your stories, share your memories and …
On 24th April 2019 and exhibition of the archive of the renowned Irish playwright Frank McGuinness was launched in UCD Special Collections. The exhibition displays handwritten and typescript drafts of McGuinness's most well-known and critically acclaimed plays including The Factory Girls, Someone Who'll Watch Over Me and Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the …
Continue reading "Frank McGuinness: From Creativity to Legacy"
With the development of email, messaging apps and social media it can feel that the art of letter writing will soon become a distant memory. A memory that future generations will assign to their great great grand parents (aka us!) But there are those who are fighting back. Letters of Note is a website dedicated to …
UCD Library Special Collections has just completed the cataloguing of a major new W. B. Yeats Collection that it received as a donation in 2015. The interest of the collection stems not only for its contents, but also from the story of how it was gathered together and how it reached UCD Library. From the …
How often do we take the time to consider the words we use to communicate? What do they reveal about our own history, and cultural heritage? Can one dialectical nuance yield all our secrets? There is a little-known collection within the National Folklore Collection UCD that seeks to shed some light on these complex questions. …
Today being the last day of May, UCD Archives decided to have a look at the collection of a man who was born on the first day of May nearly one hundred years ago, in 1919. This collection is not one that people would usually associate with UCD Archives, but it gives you a flavour …
On 4th May 2018, Irish poet Thomas Kinsella turned 90 years old. An event hosted by the Lord Mayor of Dublin to mark this occasion was held in the Mansion House. UCD Library Special Collections holds the Thomas Kinsella Collection, containing over 700 items including books, pamphlets and ephemera which Kinsella generously donated to UCD …
Dr F.S. Bourke, (1895-1959) medical doctor, Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Physicians and bibliographer assembled a private library of some 9,000 items reflecting his interests in Irish history, literature, culture and society over his lifetime until his death in 1959. Francis Stephen Bourke was born on the 14/15th July 1895 in High Street, …
Whether you’re a crossword lover, a meticulous scholar or simply an ardent logophile, you’ll have had cause at some point in your life to refer to the Oxford English Dictionary. What you might not know is that over 10,000 of the reference quotations used in that tome were seemingly contributed by one Dr. William Chester …