Staff of the Edward Worth Library

Dr Elizabethanne Boran, Librarian of the Edward Worth Library, Dublin

My appointment as Librarian in the Edward Worth Library, a collection of c. 4,300 volumes collected by an eighteenth-century physician, Edward Worth, has fuelled my interest in the history of early modern libraries – which was the topic of my Ph.D. The Worth collection is a capsule library, left to Dr. Steevens’ Hospital in Dublin following Worth’s death in 1733. Although roughly one third of the collection relates to medical topics the collection as a whole is broad-ranging and reflects Worth’s interests in early typography and fine book-bindings. My current research therefore includes the history of bookbinding as well as my other research interests: the history of science, the seventeenth-century respublica literaria, the History of the Book, the history of uiversities, and, more generally, the history of ideas in the seventeenth century. I am currently, the Secretary-General of the International Commission for the History of Universities; the Secretary of the Irish National Committee for the Blue Shield; the Irish Member for the Society for the History of Natural History; a committee member of the Library Association’s Rare Books Group of Ireland, and a member of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine Network of Ireland.

Select Publications

Elizabethanne Boran, E. Charles Nelson and Emer Lawlor (eds), Botany and Gardens in Early Modern Ireland (Dublin, 2022).
Elizabethanne Boran (ed.), Book Collecting in Ireland and Britain, 1650-1850 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2018).
Elizabethanne Boran and Mordechai Feingold (eds.) Reading and Teaching Newton in Early Modern Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2017).
Elizabethanne Boran and Pieter Dhondt (eds), Student Revolt: City and Society in Europe. From the Middle Ages to the Present Day (London: Routledge, 2017).
Elizabethanne Boran, Aldines at the Edward Worth Library (Dublin: Trustees of the Edward Worth Library, 2015).
Elizabethanne Boran (ed.) The Correspondence of James Ussher, 1600-1656 (Dublin: Irish Manuscript Commission, March 2015) 3 vols.
[With Professor Michael Hunter]: ‘Introduction’ to a special issue on Robert Boyle in Intellectual History Review vol 25 issue 1 March 2015. Professor Michael Hunter and I co-edited this special issue, which originated from a workshop held in the Edward Worth Library in November 2011.
Elizabethanne Boran and Crawford Gribben (eds.) Enforcing the Reformation in Ireland and Scotland: 1550-1700, (St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History: Ashgate, 2006).

Mr Antoine Mac Gaoithín, Library Assistant at the Edward Worth Library, Dublin

I have been a Library Assistant at the Edward Worth Library since September 2017, having worked here previously for six months between July 2016 and January 2017. I joined the staff of the Library of Trinity College Dublin in 2014 as a Preservation Assistant in the Preservation and Conservation Department and I worked on the ‘Save the Treasures of the Long Room’ preservation book cleaning project, which was followed by several Library Assistant positions in the Readers’ Services Department. I spent over two years working in the Fine Art Library and the Centre for the Study of Irish Art (CSIA) at the National Gallery of Ireland during 2012-14, where I worked on several projects including the preparation of the Sir Denis Mahon library collection for processing and cataloguing. I completed a one-year Library Studentship at the Royal Irish Academy Library during 2008-09 prior to commencing my Masters Degree in Library and Information Studies (MLIS) at University College Dublin. I hold an Honours Bachelor of Arts (International) Degree in Irish and Information Technology from the University of Galway, studying the third year of my undergraduate degree at Karlstad University in Sweden as part of the Erasmus exchange programme. I am the Edward Worth’s Library’s representative on the Digital Scholarship Network Ireland (DSN-IE), which is the national network to support and develop digital and open scholarship.