The contract for the first stage of a major National Library development plan has been announced. Worth £6.6 million, the contract has gone to Rohcon Ltd, which will start by refurbishing the former National College of Art and Design building, next door to the library.
Work will start immediately, and it is expected the new facilities will be available to the public by the end of 2000.
When completed, the plan for the library, drawn up between the National Library and the Office of Public Works, will provide for the safe and secure storage of its heritage collections and for greatly improved public access.
The new extension will provide a vastly improved genealogy research and advisory facility and new microfilm-reading facilities, where newspapers are available to read from microfilm.
There will be a new prints and drawings department where the library's research collection of more than 90,000 historical prints and drawings will be accommodated, along with reading facilities.
Further items in the development plan include the replacement of the roof, the erection of two-storey blocks on the north and west elevations, the provision of reading rooms and a seminar/ multi-purpose room, archive storage space, a new basement of 760 sq m to cater for an Oireachtas book repository and the installation of air-conditioning and a fire-protection system.
Announcing the development, Mr Martin Cullen, Minister of State responsible for the Office of Public Works, said: "It is appropriate indeed that the prints and drawings department of the library will be located in the Art College building, considering that the building originally housed the drawing section of the Royal Dublin Society, the predecessor of the National Museum and Library of Ireland.
"It also continues the association of the building with the Royal Dublin Society, who were the original owners of many of the prints and drawings in the collection, and indeed of many of the collections in the library."