Friday, 20 June 2014

Waterford Archives: amalgamation and closures

Waterford City Archives and Waterford County Archives have been amalgamated. This happened a couple of weeks ago, I'm told. Joanne Rothwell, previously the County Archivist based at Dungarvan, will now be working across the two repositories.

Both archives will be closed for the next couple of weeks, at least, but email and telephone queries will be dealt with by part-time staff. Email addresses are archives@waterfordcity.ie and archivist@waterfordcouncil.ie.

Like all archives services, Waterford's holds many terrific collections but is seriously understaffed and under resourced. Sadly, much of this useful material languishes in cardboard boxes and can't be made available to researchers until it has been professionally conserved and catalogued. Read my interview with Joanne to find out more about Waterford's County holdings. It's a couple of years old now, but gives you a good flavour both of the role of an archivist and of Waterford's archival treasures.

Incidentally, Waterford City is celebrating it's 1,100th birthday this weekend. There's lots of activities on offer, starting today. See the programme.