User:Lena.b03s3/sandbox

Role at the National Library of Ireland: 1989-1997
When Patricia Donlon was appointed to the role of director in 1989, almost a year after the last director had retired, the National Library of Ireland was an institution characterised by an absence of sufficient staff, resources, storage capacity,  and financing. The first major step Dr. Donlon took to improve matters at the NLI was the establishment of new security measures to protect the collections from being stolen. Parallel to increased security, inventory was also carried out to concretely determine how much loss the collections had suffered. This was no easy endeavour, considering the collections, which, at the time, amounted to five million items, were either catalogued on paper or not catalogued at all.

The year 1991 marked the official opening of the Manuscript Reading Room housed in the former location of the Kildare Street Club at 2-3 Kildare Street. In the same year, after the stipulated fifty-year period ended, the NLI opened the letters Paul Léon, friend, literary agent and legal consultant to James Joyce, had bequeathed to the Library. The correspondence was subsequently made available to the public and a detailed catalogue entitled The James Joyce-Paul Léon Papers in the National Library of Ireland, with a foreword by Patricia Donlon, was published in 1992.

Under Dr. Donlon's leadership, the National Library of Ireland was the first Irish institution to declare its mission and aims for the future with the publication of its Strategic Plan 1992-1997. In the document, which immediately received financial support from the government, the NLI commits to innovating aspects such as its service offering, use of information technology, and structural facilities. When Patricia Donlon joined the NLI, there was not a single computer in the Library. With the help of IBM, information technology could be introduced, enabling digital cataloguing, which would eventually render inventory by hand unnecessary.

In 1994, the NLI showcased key items from their collections in an exhibition and associated publication entitled Treasures from the National Library.

Patricia Donlon shouldered an immense workload both as director of the NLI and as an executive member of various national and international organisations. By 1997, when she retired from her position as director due to health reasons, she had significantly reformed the Library despite continued underfunding.