Duty Librarian can be contacted at info@nli.ie and the Duty Archivist on mqueries@nli.ie , Tuesday–Friday, from 9.30-5pm.
Opening Hours
The Main and Manuscripts Reading Rooms are open from
9.30am – 7.45 pm on Tuesday and Wednesday
9.30am – 4.45pm Thursday and Friday
9.30 am – 12.45 on Saturday morning
You can make an appointment for the National Photographic Archive Reading Room by emailing npaoffice@nli.ie
The Reading Rooms remain closed on Mondays, to allow the NLI to carry out work on the collections ahead of their building programme, and this will be reviewed in September.
Ordering items for the Main Reading Room
Using the Online Order Form you can order books, periodicals/journals, newspapers, official publications and microfilm. As part of their stockcheck, they are introducing some new call numbers (beginning with AA, A, BB, B, C, D, and EX) for books that used to have an Ir prefix. You can still find any book by its original call number through their Online Catalogue.
You can order up to 3 items for each collection time:
Tues-Wed: 9.30am/10.30am/11.30am/12.30pm/2pm/3pm/4pm/5pm/6pm/7pm
Thurs-Fri: 9.30am/10.30am/11.30am/12.30pm/2pm/3pm/4pm
Sat: 9.30am/10.30am/11.30am
Ordering items for the Manuscripts Reading Room
Material for the Manuscripts Reading Room – Manuscripts (including GO and Gaelic Manuscripts) and Rare Books (LO / Joly / Dix / Thom / OKE / MU / Lough Fea / Swift / Thorpe) – must be ordered in advance.
Readers can pre-order the following number of items per day:
– 30 items can be pre-ordered for collection on Tuesdays and Wednesdays – 12 for the morning and 18 for the afternoon
– 21 items can be pre-ordered for collection on Thursdays and Fridays – 12 for the morning and 9 for the afternoon
– 9 items can be pre-ordered for collection on Saturday
All morning pre-orders are available at 09.30am, and all afternoon pre-orders are available at 2.00pm. Orders to be collected in the morning (up to 12.30pm) must be placed by 2pm on the previous day. Orders to be collected in the afternoon (2pm and after) must be placed by 5pm on the preceding day.
Further information is available here or contact the Archivist on Duty at mqueries@nli.ie.
Digital Collections
You can consult 110,000 digitised items from our collections at any time via their online catalogue
You can order digital images and prints through their Copying Services
When you visit, you can also use subscription resources like the Irish Newspaper Archive, JSTOR Ireland collection and the Dictionary of Irish Biography online.
Genealogical Bulletins available on our website
Did you know that the Irish Familiy History Society is a member of the Family History Federation and the Irish Genealogical Research Society? Both organisations