Transmissions & Transformations of the Ancient World Collection: Home

Transmissions and Transformations of the Ancient World Collection is a major interdisciplinary collection, central to the development of the Humanities at UCC. It is particularly strong on Classical, Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and the history and development of art (visual art and literature) in Europe. As a collection, it is unique in Ireland in its scope and comprehensiveness. The collection comprises c.6000 books of which 15 are pre-20th century. Languages in the collection include Latin, Italian, French, German and English.

The collection prefix before the call number is: TT.

Prof. Emeritus Éamonn Ó Carragáin established links between Library Acquisitions and the best Roman bookshops, especially antiquarian, second hand and remainder bookshops (in particular, Libreria Godel). He set about acquiring in Roman bookshops, and especially in remainder shops, books which then were available at low prices, but which quickly, in subsequent years, when they went out of print, became very expensive and, on occasion, unobtainable.

In the 1980s major series including Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Ancient Christian Writers were acquired. The Rome collection, covering all periods of the city’s history and topography, exemplified in vivid terms the relevance of Greek and Roman culture to later periods of European culture. In UCC, departments in the Humanities have been particularly strong in the period which stretches from the time of Christ down to the high Middle Ages. From the 1990s the Department of History of Art was developed. In the context of various developments an interdisciplinary group of scholars made a submission on library holdings to the 2008 PTRLI5 funding. The submission was entitled “Transmissions and Transformations of the Ancient World.”