The Making of an Exhibition: Uncovering Discover

To celebrate Library Ireland Week 2010, Elizabeth Kirwan, curator of Discover Your National Library: Explore, Reflect, Connect will discuss the planning and the development of the Library's new exhibition which makes extensive use of digital media technology.

About the exhibition – Discover Your National Library: Explore, Reflect, Connect

The exhibition Discover Your National Library enables visitors to examine objects from the Library's collections in the kind of detail that has hitherto been possible for only a limited number of researchers, academics and
other specialists.  Over the lifespan of the exhibition, several thousand different objects will be featured and will be made available online.

The National Library worked with Microsoft Ireland and Martello media to develop an innovative technology solution to view the hundreds of rare items in the Library's collections.

Among the artefacts on view currently (artefacts on display will change three times a year) are rare manuscripts such as the Book of Magauran, an early 14th century poem-book containing poetry composed in Irish for the McGovern family; a 1588 deed signed by Sir Walter Raleigh; a 1795 lottery ticket; a set of 1930s cigarette cards illustrated by the painter Jack B Yeats; several 18th century survey maps of Irish bogs (designed to assess whether it was feasible to grow crops such as corn or hemp on Ireland's bogs at a time when the English government was fighting the Napoleonic wars and suffering economic shortages); a letter from Éamonn Ceannt to his wife Áine O'Brennan, written a few hours before his execution on 8 May, 1916; and a notebook of stunning drawings by 19th century antiquary George Petrie of his archaeological finds, ranging from arrowheads to gold ornaments. 

Date:    Friday 12 March 2009
Time:   1pm
Venue: Seminar room, National Library of Ireland, Kildare St, Dublin 2.

No booking required, all are welcome.