Absolutely. these volumes in here, they re our most valuable, our most valued. they re also our most vulnerable. this is this beautiful library, as you see, but, in effect, we re in an inner city ring road, and all that particulate pollution from all the traffic is coming through the windows and coming and landing on the books. so, there is a restoration project going on to deal with exactly that, right? absolutely. this year, the library has launched an ambitious 90 million euro restoration to improve the building s environmental controls and help protect the collection. during the project, every single one of these books will be cleaned, catalogued and moved off site. if you didn t do it, what would happen? well, the books would deteriorate more. the building, already, we know there are structural issues with it. we ve got to do it. actually, there isn t a choice.
And all that particulate pollution from all the traffic is coming through the windows and coming and landing on the books. so, there is a restoration project going on to deal with exactly that, right? absolutely. this year, the library has launched an ambitious 90 million euro restoration to improve the building s environmental controls and help protect the collection. during the project, every single one of these books will be cleaned, catalogued and moved off site. if you didn t do it, what would happen? well, the books would deteriorate more. the building, already, we know there are structural issues with it. we ve got to do it. actually, there isn t a choice. we absolutely have to do this project. the more damaged or vulnerable items will be treated here, at the conservation laboratory.
With exactly that, right? absolutely. this year, the library has launched an ambitious 90 million euro restoration to improve the building s environmental controls and help protect the collection. during the project, every single one of these books will be cleaned, catalogued and moved off site. if you didn t do it, what would happen? well, the books would deteriorate more. the building, already, we know there are structural issues with it. we ve got to do it. actually, there isn t a choice. we absolutely have to do this project. the more damaged or vulnerable items will be treated here, at the conservation laboratory. so, this is an example from the manuscripts collection. it s a map, and here it is being surface cleaned, and clodagh s using what we call a smoke sponge.
So, with so many books i mean, hundreds of thousands storage must be a huge problem? absolutely. these volumes in here, they re our most valuable, our most valued. they re also our most vulnerable. this is this beautiful library, as you see, but, in effect, we re in an inner city ring road, and all that particulate pollution from all the traffic is coming through the windows and coming and landing on the books. so, there is a restoration project going on to deal with exactly that, right? absolutely. this year, the library has launched an ambitious 90 million euro restoration to improve the building s environmental controls and help protect the collection. during the project, every single one of these books will be cleaned, catalogued and moved off site. if you didn t do it, what would happen? well, the books would deteriorate more. the building, already, we know there are structural issues with it. we ve got to do it. actually, there isn t a choice. we absolutely have
We ve got to do it. actually, there isn t a choice. we absolutely have to do this project. the more damaged or vulnerable items will be treated here, at the conservation laboratory. so, this is an example from the manuscripts collection. it s a map, and here it is being surface cleaned, and clodagh s using what we call a smoke sponge. you see the kind of muck that we get off. and then a very fine brush, to make sure no debris is left. so, over here, this book had suffered from the board separating from the text block, and it has been re backed with this new piece of leather, and the next stage is to look at the pages of the book. oh, wow. and in this case, there is a running tear, so in situ tear repair will happen now, just to prevent that from extending through use.