The librarian and her book

Leinster House is an absolutely beautiful building that I always enjoyed working in and within the large complex of offices, meeting rooms, restaurants, canteens and bars, you will find a members´reading room and library facilities that helps elected representatives to read and research a wide variety of materials from provincial papers to published reports and I imagine a lot of archived material as well.

Research Librarian, Lauren Lawler with Ulysses.

The librarians, I believe are also researchers who help Irish politicians to find documents needed to form opinion and argue their position.

Not only do they provide an essential service for TDs and Senators but I think they also enjoy taking part in cultural and historical events and the first time I ever saw anyone dressed up for Bloomsday (other than on television) was a Librarian from the Oireachtas and I sadly neither recognised the significance of the date in mid-June or recognised his outfit.

To be honest, I thought it might have been some kind of 1980s Doctor Who cosplay.

Over the years, I have seen more and more people celebrating Joyce and Bloomsday and over the last five years I have also taking part in readings and dressing up too.

The Groundhog Day Challenge aims to get people posting pictures with selfies of Ulysses or shelfies of their bookshelves and is more of a colourful campaign than that I am delighted as already received shelfies from Uruguay and Canada and interest from America and Australia and lots of pictures from Spain and some from Ireland too.

In the picture we can see Research Librarian Lauren Lawler proudly displaying her own copy of Ulysses inside the Library of Leinster House. Her copy is a Penguin Classics reprint from 2000 and features a drawing by Wyndham Lewis and an introduction by Declan Kiberd

Is a picture worth 700 pages?

A picture is worth a thousand words so while the Groundhog Day Challenge barely touches the surface of James Joyce's masterpiece, here is a picture of a wonderful librarian and the text from Telemachus uploaded as WordArt where all the text is weighted by the number of times a word is used as you can clearly see with the size of the text for Steeeeeeeephen.

Supported by

UNESCO City of Literature