REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE ON THE OCCASION OF THE OPENING OF THE JAMES USSHER LIBRARY
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE ON THE OCCASION OF THE OPENING OF THE JAMES USSHER LIBRARY TRINITY COLLEGE
Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am glad to be back in Trinity College Dublin amongst so many friends and former colleagues. Having spent many happy days in the late 70’s and early 80’s here, and some more fleeting visits since, this feels very much like a ‘home’ and not an ‘away’ event. It is a great honour to be invited to open the James Ussher Library – my thanks to Trinity’s Provost, Dr. John Hegarty and the Secretary to the College, Mr. Michael Gleeson for inviting me to officially open this magnificent facility. It is a day of righteous pride for this University and for all those whose hard work and devotion brought the Library into being, transforming an idea into this splendid reality.
This College, the doyenne of Irish universities was in its infancy when, Dubliner James Ussher first crossed its threshold as a student in 1594. He was in his early teens starting out on the life’s journey that was to make him the University of Dublin’s first graduate, a legendary scholar and theologian, an insatiable book collector, a biblical chronologist of both note and notoriety. Today the reputation of his famous book collection, like the reputation of the University which houses it, has grown in stature and we see in them both, proud showcases of the intellectual curiosity which lies at the heart of Irish scholarship. Ussher’s own academic reputation has of course suffered under the onslaught of subsequent generations of scholars who have reduced his reputation as a Biblical chronologist to something of a comedy of errors. But from the perspective of a nervous and self-doubting student studying in this library, it will be an enduring comfort to know that it bears the name of a scholar who to quote Richard Dawkins “was wrong with such confident and ludicrous precision”. But he was very right about the place of books at the centre of learning.
There is something incredibly endearing about a University celebrating with such enthusiasm a scholar whose calculations of the date of creation were arguably out by several billion years and whose predicted date for the end of the world passed us by a few years ago, ending only any lingering doubts about Ussher’s accuracy. I can think of no greater encouragement and reassurance to generations of scholars than to study in a place named after a man whose huge appetite for answers to the big questions of his day, led to a love of sources, of early manuscripts, of written reservoirs of insight, wisdom, presumption and assertion. He was not afraid to learn from others. He was not afraid to articulate his own view. He left himself wide open to being wrong in his honest attempt to be right. He provoked generation after generation to prove him wrong.
His collection of books is of course one of this University’s great treasures and on its own, more than reason enough to dedicate this new library to his name. But in a sophisticated era, which has the luxury of bemused hindsight and not a little tendency towards new certainties Ussher’s story as a life-long student who got things badly wrong as well as right, has an inspirational element that it would be easy to overlook. Not everyone who uses this library will find the answers to their questions but we need them to try. Not everyone who uses this library will get things right but we will hopefully learn from what they get wrong. Every student, every scholar who commits to the adventure of learning will help themselves and the rest of us to answer the big and small questions, which keep us fascinated by life itself. There is a lesson in humility too in Ussher’s story - a challenge to keep open the doors of doubt, to resist the lure of the answer that feeds the ego, to keep faithful to the scholarly culture of questioning that keeps pushing out the boundaries of knowledge and weeding out the ill-founded givens of the past.
I hope that this library with its leading edge technology, its dazzling facilities, with their comfortable embrace of those with disabilities, its support for those who see the information highway more as a potholed botherín, will be a place where intellectual appetite is whetted. It is like a fitness centre for the brain and for those who have to look after countless volumes and thousands of readers, it may well be a fitness centre for the body too.
That this new Library greatly strengthens Trinity College’s range of services is obvious but it also puts a great new resource at the heart of Ireland’s drive to become a centre of gravity in scholarly research. Many researchers are going to be eternally grateful that the massive Legal Deposit Library will be housed here, making their lives considerably easier. The housing here too of the Conservation Laboratory and Glucksman Map Library contribute considerably to make this a powerhouse of intellectual activity.
The Council and Board of Trinity are surely entitled to be proud of the Ussher Library. From blank sheet of paper to opening the doors has been a long journey of faith, hope and fundraising. Without the Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions with assistance from the European Regional Development Fund, we might not be here. But there have been other remarkable friends and benefactors too who have made this day possible. In particular I would also like to express my appreciation and I’m sure that of everyone here, to Chuck Feeney and Atlantic Philanthropies and Louis and Loretta Glucksman. Their continuing generosity to this University and to our country is little short of phenomenal. We are grateful that we have such good friends and that we have no shortage of great ideas. Archbishop Ussher might have to rewrite certain theories to guarantee a first class degree today but there is no doubt that were he a student in today’s Trinity he would find here a first class library in a first class University.
Go raibh maith agaibh.