What is it to be human? This question that has absorbed humankind since the dawn of civilisation must be at the core of Arts, Humanities and Social Science Research in a world-class university. A great university library as a repository of memory and story offers rich opportunities to ponder answers to this profound question. The Library of Trinity College, Dublin, the largest research library in Ireland and among the finest in the world, with the Long Room at its heart, has since its foundation in the early years of the seventeenth century, afforded generations of scholars and students abundant opportunities to explore the human condition in its compelling and complex diversity. It is crucial to Trinity's long-term international reputation. The Long Room Hub at the beginning of the third millennium seeks to ensure that new generations of researchers will be enabled to sustain this tradition of fundamental enquiry through confirming the Library as the central resource for the university's exploration of what it means to be human. It will seek to consolidate and enhance the Library's holdings, while serving as the material basis of a wide variety of research projects, programmes, research centres and individual scholarly endeavours. Dedicated to the exploration of distinctively Irish and European cultural perspectives on the human condition, the Long Room Hub will also seek to address questions about human identity in global contexts, focusing research energies and thereby helping fully to realise the creative potential of Trinity College as a great national and international institution.