The College Library has an unrivalled collection of over 76,000 books and exhibition catalogues. Many of these are unavailable in other Irish libraries. The major emphasis is on 19th and 20th century art and design, but material from a large number of other subject areas is also acquired. The collection is chiefly open access, but there are closed access special collections of rare and valuable books and of materials relating to Irish art and design.

The Library subscribes to about 300 magazines and these offer an international view of the subjects taught in the College. Comprehensive back runs of many of these periodicals are available and the Library’s online and CD-ROM indices allow access to these. In the near future the Library will be offering full text remote access to a variety of journals.

A digitisation project is underway to replace the existing slide collection and allow remote access to the digital images.

The collection of material relating to Irish art and design is of major importance and is used by researchers from Ireland and abroad. This is held in a special collection known as the National Irish Visual Arts Library. This collection is a partnership project between
the College and the Arts Council. A database of information on Irish artists is available at http://www.ncad.ie. This is continuously updated.

Librarian
Edward Murphy BA, DipLib, MLIS