Designing the Book of Kells Experience

For more than three centuries, the Old Library at Trinity College Dublin has been a working research library at the heart of the university’s academic life, while also welcoming visitors from around the world to encounter its historic collections. It has an internationally recognizable interior, often described as one of the world’s most beautiful libraries.

Today, the library receives more than one million exhibition visitors each year. These visits play an important role in supporting the care of the collections, the conservation of the building, and the university’s wider academic mission.

At the end of 2027, the Old Library and its Long Room will close to allow a major conservation and redevelopment program that will safeguard the building and its collections for future generations. In advance of this closure, Trinity set out to create a new visitor experience that could continue to engage audiences with the history and significance of the library and its collections in a unique way.

The result was the Book of Kells Experience, an immersive exhibition that reveals the life of the library’s collections. Through storytelling, projection, and digital media, visitors encounter the library’s vast and varied collections, the people responsible for their care, and the stories they encompass. Since opening in 2024, more than 2.5 million people have visited the experience.

This session chronicles the project's development, from concept and narrative design to shaping the visitor journey, and reflects on how storytelling and creative interpretation can help libraries share their collections with wider audiences.