Dublin's library service is to undergo major developments in the coming months, with more than £8.5 million being spent on three projects.
The capital's Central Library, which has been on the first floor of the Ilac shopping centre since 1986, will be moving to a new site this year as the entire complex is refurbished.
While the library will stay within the Ilac building, its new three-storey location is to be on the corner of Parnell and Moore Streets. The library will have ground-floor access (unlike the present library) and an increase in size from 24,000 to almost 40,000 sq ft.
The City Librarian, Ms Deirdre Ellis-King, says no figures can yet be given for the cost of the move this spring, since it has been instigated by the Ilac Centre's owner, Irish Life, with which the library is now in negotiation.
However, Ms Ellis-King is able to say how much will be spent on the other two schemes which will see the library's administration move out of Cumberland House, the Fenian Street office block it has occupied since the late 1970s.
Work has already begun on a new branch library in Cabra, and part of this structure will house the organisation's book-processing department which supervises selections and acquisitions of work as well as receipting and cataloguing for the entire city.
The Cabra library is expected to cost £3.5 million, with work due to finish on the building next November. Dublin City Library's biggest undertaking this year will be refurbishing the building in Pearse Street which was its headquarters for much of this century.
The building now houses a branch library and a variety of specialist material including the Gilbert Collection, the Dix Collection and the Dublin and Irish collections, none of which is widely known. When first completed in 1909, it also provided a home for the city's library administration, until the demands for more space required a move to Fenian Street.
Administrative services will return to Pearse Street once work on the building has been completed; as working drawings are now being organised and funding is in place, Ms Ellis-King expects the job to start by late March and to be finished within two years.
As has been the case until now, the main library is to contain a local lending branch on its ground floor, but an exhibition/ lecture room will be installed at this level. Two adjoining houses will also be converted into seminar and conference rooms.
Meanwhile the library's first floor will become a 100-seat public reading room where all the material already kept on the site will be more readily available.
Above this room, the attic storey will be used as office space for the City Librarian and her staff. While no substantial changes are to be made to the old library building, later additions to its rear will be demolished and replaced by a new six-storey structure housing the Dublin city archives. Until recently these were stored in the City Hall, which itself is undergoing refurbishment.
The total cost of this work is £5 million, half of which has been provided by the Department of the Environment through its Public Libraries Grant Scheme, with the balance coming from Dublin Corporation's own resources.
When completed, the space at Pearse Street will have increased from just over 20,000 sq ft to more than 32,000 sq ft.
Ms Ellis-King says all this work is necessary since the services offered by the city's 20 branch libraries remain as popular as ever despite the advent of alternative attractions. She oversees an annual budget of almost £12 million provided by the corporation, as well as an annual grant of £120,000 from the Department of Education, so the library can provide a service to primary schools.
Some 50 per cent of the capital's population are registered as members of a library. A user survey conducted by the organisation across all its outlets during one week last spring revealed that more than 58,500 people called in to a branch.
Multiplied by the number of weeks the city's libraries are open during each year, this adds up to 2.8 million annual visits. Close to 70 per cent of those questioned were either borrowing or returning a book during their visit.
However, Ms Ellis-King notes that the same visitors could be engaged in a number of other activities. Over 37 per cent of those surveyed were "browsing," 24.5 per cent had gone to the library to seek information or "find something out"; and almost 20 per cent were using the place to study or work. "There is a social dimension to libraries as well," adds the City Librarian. "A lot of people in the survey commented on their library being a place to meet."
To encourage this aspect, her organisation arranges a wide variety of events in all branches, including lectures and exhibitions.
For the past three years the Central Library has hosted a series of talks run in association with the Dublin City Enterprise Board, which was designed to assist those attending to start their own business.
The Central Library also contains an open learning centre, a picture-lending collection, the city's music library, an adult literacy resource centre, a language laboratory and conversation exchange groups for people to improve their skills in a number of European languages.