Books are my business: Conservator Louise O'Connor

I first got interested in conservation through a school trip to Italy, where I had the opportunity to see conservators working on frescoes. I was encouraged by a lot of people to pursue it as a career, and it matched my love of heritage. 

I went on to study art history at UCD, and I got a placement working in the Long Room at Trinity College as a preservation assistant. That opened up a world of early printed books that I never even knew existed. I am interested in all types of heritage but libraries, early printed books and early prints and drawings are my main interests.

What does your role involve?

As a conservator, I’m responsible for looking after the collections and making them accessible to all our readers, researchers or users, either in the reading rooms, in exhibitions or online, through digitisation. 

There are lots of different ways that users come into the reading rooms. Generally, they’re undergrads — they might be doing a class or a research project. 

We get external readers every now and again, and we also get a lot of special interest groups and research groups coming in. It’s a cross-section of the UCC community and the local community. 

One of the main things I’m working on at the moment is our new preservation lab. We were lucky enough to be awarded funding from the Heritage Council and we used it to buy specialised equipment, and the library also invested in equipment belonging to the late Tony Cains, who was head of conservation at Trinity College. 

So it’s a lovely mix of sustainable reuse of old equipment and modern state-of-the-art equipment, which is what you see in every conservation studio. In the preservation lab, we treat damaged materials to make them accessible to readers again. 

Naturally, over time, books can degrade because of the way they’re made, how they were handled, or maybe they’ve suffered mould or an infestation. 

Some of our books are 400 or 500 years old, and have lived very interesting lives before I get to meet them. We take care of them, keep them in a secure location, at the correct temperature and humidity, and we educate readers on how to use them carefully. 

We also do things like digitisation and filming, and we follow best standards to eliminate any risks of damage.

What’s the oldest book in the collections?

Bruni’s Historia del Popolo Fiorentino (1476) is our oldest book (or incunabula); it was printed in Venice. We also have a book on witchcraft which was printed in London in 1584.

What do you like most about what you do?

Definitely the variety — I’m looking at different types of materials every day. Conservators are very nerdy, we love to look at exactly how books are made, their sewing structures, what is the paper like, how does it feel? 

It is a privilege to get to touch and feel that materiality, and if a book is damaged to figure out the best thing to do. That could be full conservation treatment or more often than not, it is a case of preserving it as it is and using minimal intervention.

What do you like least?

I’m not a fan of the bugs which you do come across sometimes as a conservator. I do try to be brave when it comes to dealing with remnants of insects in old books and stuff like that.

Three desert island books 

The first one would be a classic, To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. I also love a murder mystery so I would bring The Girl on the Train, by Paula Hawkins. That was a total page-turner, I really enjoyed it. The last one would be one that is on a long list of books I’m going to read, it’s The World According to Colour by James Fox, which explores the history of colour through all cultures.

https://libguides.ucc.ie/specialcollection

heritagecouncil.ie