[5] O'Neill assembled some of the most significant library and archival collections pertaining to the four Irish authors who have thus far been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature: William Butler Yeats (1923), George Bernard Shaw (1925), Samuel Beckett (1969), and Seamus Heaney (1995).

[1] The Burns Library is housed in Bapst Hall, a Gothic Revival building designed by architect Charles Donagh Maginnis, one of the original structures on the Chestnut Hill campus.

[1] The Burns Library holds collections of letters and books from well-known Irish authors and Nobel laureates, such as Samuel Beckett, Seamus Heaney, George Bernard Shaw, and William Butler Yeats.

It also includes the primary archival holdings of writers like Gerald Dawe, John F. Deane, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, and Flann O’Brien, along with materials from Padraic Colum and Francis Stuart.

[1] Other notable holdings include the archives of Northern Ireland photojournalist Bobbie Hanvey, comprising more than 75,000 images not only of the paramilitary conflicts and daily life during the decades of "The Troubles" but also some of the most widely circulated photographs of Heaney and other Irish cultural icons.