The National Library is to undergo renovations to protect its collections and make them more accessible to the public under a new €10 million investment programme.

The deterioration of certain areas of the Victorian-era building on Kildare Street in Dublin city was putting items in some of its archives at risk.

“We have all the neswpaper collections, the periodicals, books, the legal deposit. Every Irish publisher puts a book for safekleeping here for the nation and they are all very fragile,” said National Library director Sandra Collins.

“They start fine but over time the environment literally attacks paper. Changes in draft or damp, humidity, temperature. All these things are basically elments that attack our collections,” she added.

She said the investment, announced by the Department of Heritage, will enable the library to fix these problems and put in place modern and efficient storage systems.

Dr Collins said said she also hopes the investment will “allow the public to directly engage with the bookshelves and the treasures of the National Library” which are currently closed to visitors.

The library is expected to spend the next six to eight months working on a plan after which tenders to carry out the works will be sought. Refurbishment, which will take about two years, will begin in late 2016 or early 2017.

Minister for Heritage Heather Humphreys said the announcement was a great day for the library. “What we want to do with this investment is to upgrade the storage facilities which have been here since they were built 120 years ago,” she said.

“We also want to improve the visitor experience and there’ll be rooms here for people to met and hold conferences as well,” she added.

“Not alone will this be a great improvement for the public who use this facility but for the staff who work here because I know they have worked in difficult conditions but they have managed all the while to increase the visitor numbers because there’s a huge increase in numbers to all our cultural institutions.”