In pursuit of a longer shelf life

There are 260,000 precious old books in the Long Room at Trinity College library, all of which need to be cleaned. Rosita Boland meets the restoration team.

Books do furnish a room, as the late literary critic, Anthony Powell, once observed. They certainly furnish Trinity College's Long Room, all 260,000 of them. While Trinity's most famous book is the Book of Kells, it also holds thousands of other precious old books, most of them shelved in high bays in the Long Room, on both the ground floor and galleries above.

The thing about books, like all items that furnish a room, is that they eventually need cleaning, particularly if they have been in situ for hundreds of years.

Over the past two years, some 20,000 books have been removed from the shelves and cleaned by a team of conservation assistants. It's a huge, long-term task: there are still 240,000 more volumes to go. To date, alumni have contributed €210,000 to the project, the estimated total cost of which is €2 million.

"It costs €50 to clean five books," explains Susan Bioletti, Trinity's Keeper of Preservation and Conservation. Bioletti points out that the books in the Long Room have been subjected to different kinds of pollution over the centuries they have been in place. In the 19th century, building work was carried out, leaving behind stone dust. In the 20th century, the city's smog crept inexorably inwards. In the 21st century, half a million tourists now pass through the Long Room every year, distributing what Bioletti describes as "people particles - skin and clothes fibres".

Cleaning books may not be the most glamorous event that Trinity has ever had to fundraise for, but if the books are to be preserved for future generations, their condition needs to be stabilised. It's a measure of how highly regarded the library is that more than 100 people from all around the world applied for one of the initial four places on the cleaning and conservation team. Since July 2004, 11 people have worked on this project.

Three of the current team - Mariá José González who is from Argentina, Jennie Coughlan of Co Wicklow, and Helen Vahey from Co Mayo - are working together in a room in the Long Room complex that is directly above the area where the Book of Kells is displayed. As it happens, all 11 of those working on the project thus far have been female.

"It's our need to clean," says Coughlan wryly. They all come from varied working backgrounds. She is an archaeologist by training, specialising in human remains. González's background is in fine art and print-making, and Vahey read history and politics. Each person is contracted to work for one year on the project.

The area the three conservation assistants work in, when cleaning and carrying out simple repairs to the books, is divided from the passing public by a see-through screen. They attract a lot of attention as they work, and over the time they have been there they have become used to being questioned by curious tourists, many of whom constantly ask the same questions.

"Are these all books of Kells?"

"What are you doing?"

"How old are those books?"

In fact, many of the books the women work on are both extremely valuable and several hundred years old. On the day I visit, there's a 1493 history of the world and creation on the table, with woodcut prints; a 1762 edition of the works of Henry Fielding, including his play The Modern Husband; and the ninth volume of a history of France, which contains an index of notable families. Do they ever get daunted by the prospect of handling such valuable objects? "Well, we're surrounded by it," González explains. It's true: the context of their unique working environment, a world-famous library visited by half a million people every year, must make you used to being around rare old books.

Although all the books have been previously catalogued, there is still an element of surprise each day for the team when they open the books they have taken from the Long Room in the morning to work on for that day. All three have atlases and travel journals as their favourites, and they linger longer over these than any others.

On an average day, depending on the condition of the books, they will clean up to 40 volumes between them. First, the books are taken from the library shelves in the Long Room. Then they are "hoovered" for external dust using a special machine. Then each book is examined individually. Some books have to be literally cleaned (rubbed with a special dry sponge), page by page. Small repairs are done. Books that need specialist rebinding are tied with white cotton to keep them together while awaiting restoration. All details of the condition of the books and the state of the paper and binding are logged on a computer.

"The condition is the most important thing to log," Coughlan explains. "And to keep the information consistent. We won't be here in 20 years' time when the project is finished, so we have to set up a template to record the information."

There is a short pause. Everyone looks anew at the day's stack of books on the table. So many more where those came from. And many years from now, when these three people are in different stages of their lives, there will be another team around this same table, doing the same careful, necessary job.

For more information, see www.tcd.ie/library or e-mail inquiries about donations to save.treasures@tcd.ie