After months of their doors being closed, Ireland’s public libraries will soon begin moving on from their invaluable ‘Contact and Collect’ service, to welcoming us back into their vital buildings again.
Saluting our public libraries, one of the jewels of civic life, this week’s RTÉ Davis Now Lectures podcast shares from its archives a wonderfully mischievous and entertaining talk by Professor Declan Kiberd from the 2002 series University of the People, first broadcast to mark 100 years of Carnegie Libraries in Ireland - listen above.
Kiberd says writers as diverse as Catherine Cookson, Thomas McCarthy and Frank O’Connor began their love of books in their local libraries. The librarian in his homeplace of Cappoquin, Co Waterford placed in McCarthy’s hands a copy of poet Richard Murphy’s collection Sailing to an Island, thereby launching another poetic life.
Kiberd compares the wonderfully open and progressive libraries of today with the once stultifying Irish public library system when playwright Lennox Robinson was fired from his position as secretary and treasurer of the Carnegie Trust in Ireland because of a short story he had written. He also quotes Dermot Foley, who as County Librarian for Clare wrote that the censorship mentality of the local library committees meant that ‘an Irish stew of sloppy romances and imported westerns’ made up the literary diet of library users.
Other contributions to the 2002 Thomas Davis series’ The University of the People, on our public libraries, produced by Bernadette Comerford, and being released as Davis Now Lectures podcasts include talks by Diarmuid Ferriter, Fionnuala Hanrahan, Fintan O’Toole and Muriel McCarthy.
For more RTÉ Davis Now Lectures podcasts on a host of subjects from the built and natural environment to literature and poetry, history, politics and theatre, listen and subscribe here.
