[...] Devoting herself full-time to Trinity, she was appointed first Keeper of Early Printed Books: an appointment that paralleled the slightly earlier creation of a keepership of the manuscripts. Like her counterpart in manuscripts, William O’Sullivan, she fought fiercely for the highest standards of cataloguing and care. Such battles hardly endeared her to blinkered administrators, but were applauded by scholars within and far beyond Dublin. So she created a department, which became an essential centre for all enquiring into the printed culture of Ireland.

With a control of mischief and invective in the tradition of Jonathan Swift and his contemporaries, she revived the squib and verse satire. The productions, on a hand press under the imprint of St Sepulchre's and (latterly) the Trinity Closet Press, will become collectors' pieces. One signalled a foray by Pollard into public controversy. In 1972, the benchers of the Dublin inn of court, the King's Inns, decided to raise money for necessary improvements (notably to their kitchens) by selling books. Paul Pollard was to the fore - with Nick Robinson, husband of the later president of Ireland, Mary Robinson - in decrying the sale. The protests were unavailing and led to "Miss Pollard - that woman!" being demonised by some within the Irish legal world.

What's a few mouldy books when the B-enchers can eat?
When our noble justiciars can gobble up Caxtons
And belch in contentment, their bellies replete?

Through her scholarship, pluck and - sometimes - bloody-mindedness, she ensured that the books in her care at Trinity were expertly catalogued, preserved and made accessible to the interested. With meagre means, she bought discriminatingly for the library, especially Irish plays and novels. On her own behalf, she collected books for children, many of which she has bequeathed to Trinity College. Locally, her exacting standards attracted young disciples, several of whom now oversee historic libraries in Dublin. [...]

Her wider renown as the leading authority of print in Ireland brought an invitation to deliver the Lyell Lectures in Oxford. The resulting book, Dublin's Trade in Books, 1550-1800 (by "M. Pollard", 1989), revealed her technical mastery of complex subjects - the laws of copyright, prices of paper and labour, volumes of imports and exports. Her numerous fresh insights into the social, cultural and confessional histories of Ireland are slowly being followed up.

In 2000 there appeared a second work unlikely ever to be superseded, A Dictionary of the Members of the Dublin Book Trade, 1550-1800. Besides being a biographical and bibliographical treasure-chest, it laid bare for the first time the structure and dynamics of a trade organisation in 18th-century Dublin - then the second city of the Hanoverians' empire. [...]