In 'Kate O'Brien: Legend in Her Own Time' activist and feminist Smyth covers themes and characters in O'Brien's books - including their bid to be free of conventions and how men are incidental from the 1997 'Kate O'Brien: The Woman and the Writer' birth-centenary series.

From the 'Kate O'Brien: The Woman and the Writer' birth-centenary of O'Brien 1997 series and whose insights into the lives of women, so far from suburban Dublin where she and her husband entertained O'Brien in the 1970s, Boland appreciates more fully since then.

From the 'Kate O'Brien: The Woman and the Writer' birth-centenary of O'Brien 1997 series is an intriguing account of her longtime friend, and relates too why after years of obscurity O'Brien's writing in print again attracts much scholarship and new readers.

Educationalist John Coolahan on the precarious relationship which existed between the Irish state and its libraries for much of the 20th century in his talk 'UnRealised Potential: Ireland's Public Libraries and Our Schools' from the 2002 series marking 100 years of Carnegie Libraries in Ireland.

Historian Diarmuid Ferriter in his talk 'The Post-War Public Library Service in Ireland: Bring Books to the Remotest Hamlets and Hills' from the 2002 series marking 100 years of Carnegie Libraries in Ireland, refers to a 1947 speech made by future president of Ireland, Erskine Childers on his vision for public libraries.

Fintan O'Toole, writer, critic and journalist on the private pleasures of reading and how our first library card gives us an entry into the public community of readers in his talk 'Reading, Writing and Rebelling: Growing Up with Public Libraries' from the 2002 series marking 100 years of Carnegie Libraries in Ireland.

James Joyce by Maurice Craig, author of the landmark book 'Dublin 1660-1860: an Architectural and Social History', who in the 1982 Thomas Davis Lectures Joyce Centenary series says Joyce showed little interest in buildings, however magnificent and though he alludes to things seen, experience primarily reached Joyce through the ear.

James Joyce's Letters by Richard Ellmann, his biographer, who says hints and declarations in them reveal Joyce a little as he saw himself, describing the letters in the 1982 Thomas Davis Lectures Joyce Centenary series as among the most interesting and insinuating ever written.

Poet Eavan Boland on James Joyce: The Young Romantic, from the 1982 Thomas Davis Lectures, the centenary of the birth of Joyce, when she considers his poetry collection Chamber Music, A Little Cloud from his short story collection Dubliners and passages from A Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man.

Marsh's Library, Ireland's first public library, and its rare books figure in James Joyce's Stephen Hero, Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake. Dr Muriel McCarthy, then its keeper, recounts its intriguing history from 1707, in 'The University of the People' 2002 series, the 100th anniversary of Carnegie Libraries in Ireland.