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Excerpt from Catalogue of the Irish Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin
The arrangement of the mss. On the shelves has been repeatedly altered, as the collection grew and was shifted from one room to another; hence arises a series of different shelf-marks, the older ones being often lost and obliterated. This naturally causes much difficulty in identifying the entries in the successive Catalogues, since the earlier compilers did not see the necessity of keeping a record of previous arrangements. In the case of Irish mss., the difficulty is increased by the vagueness of the descriptions given. Besides, the original volumes have in many cases been broken up and the parts recombined, often in a quite arbitrary fashion. Our present Librarian, Dr. J. G. Smyly, has made a careful study of the press-marks, and has succeeded, at the cost of much trouble, in identifying nearly all the mss. Mentioned in the two earliest Catalogues. His results are embodied in a finding index which makes it possible to refer readily from these catalogues to Lyon's, and vice versa. We shall now proceed to trace the successive stages by which the collection grew to its present dimensions.
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