i am an international student at ucd. i thought u should know that the ucd school will be moving to belfield in a few years, which will change things a little. library facilities at moment are ok but will improve hopefully. ucd has a rather poor reputation in terms of getting things done and being organised like you would expect in a first world country, but that is starting to change. and i am not just paddy whacking when i say that, it's bloody true. in fact, from what i hear about it from my friends, trinity is pretty much the same laid back sort of attitude. you read the book and then wham, there's this exam with an incredibly high standard. and people in ireland like totally understate their intelligence. they sort of think it's not cool to show off, which is like totally the opposite of americans. americans are like hey man, i am a gunner, i am going to shoot you down, whereas irish people are just out to laugh at you really. and people here will be like, hey yeah, that exam was tough and they will say yeah i was out drinking or whatever when you know they were sitting up in their cramped little bedsit in blackrock till like 4 am every day studying their eyes out but they will never say it. if you want to read a journal from like the mid 1970's when the country was like really really really poor, you might have a hard time finding it because the journal collections from the pre-1990's are rather spotty. but trinity doesn't have that problem because the history of trinity ensures that they have a right to every book published in the land of her majesty the queen. getting access to those books is another story, because st james library has only the last ten years of journals on file. however, i must say that these days there is not much difference between ucd and trinity, it's all the same irish standard really at the end of the day. and with the internet who cares really. as for james hospital, it's in the armpit of dublin whereas some of the ucd hospitals are in more posh suburbs (some are equally armpit like however). and dudes, jsut because rcsi has the name royal in it doesn't mean a damn thing. just means the fees are that much higher.