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= Career = Upon returning from Paris, Best became Honorary Secretary of the School of Irish Learning from the year of its inception in 1903, which was incorporated into the Royal Irish Academy in 1926. He acted as joint editor of the School’s journal Ériu (journal), and continued after the transfer of the journal to the Academy. In 1904 Best joined the staff of the National Library of Ireland as an assistant director. He succeeded as Chief Librarian in 1924, and subsequently Library Director, where he remained in the post until 1940. Throughout his career, Best became a prolific expert on Celtic studies, and has been widely attributed to the survival and success of the subject as it is known today.

Achievements
His work earned him several accolades. He received the Leibniz Medal of the Royal Prussian Academy in 1914, an honorary D.Litt. by the National University of Ireland in 1920, and an Honorary D.Litt. by Trinity College Dublin in 1923. In 1936 Best was awarded the Medal of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences by Pope Pius XI for his facsimile edition of the Milan codex. He was elected as President of the Royal Irish Academy in 1942. His works, Bibliography of Irish Philology and of Irish Printed Literature (1913) and Bibliography of Irish Philology and Manuscript Literature, 1913-41 (1942), are considered to be some of his most important scholarly outputs.

Best is also known for his appearances in famous works of Irish literature. He appears in James Joyces’ Ulysses, describing him as such, “Mr Best entered, tall, young, mild, light. He bore in his hand with grace a notebook, new, large, clean, bright”. George Moore described him as, “A young man with beautiful shining hair and features so fine and delicate that many a young girl must have dreamed of him at her casement window, and would have loved him if he had not been so passionately interested in the infixed pronoun”, in his memoir Hail and Farewell. Best was drawn by John Butler Yeats, father of William Butler Yeats, and his portrait now hangs in the National Gallery of Ireland.