Thursday 17 November 2016

Explore Your Archive week returns 19–27 Nov

The Archives and Records Association, Ireland (ARAI) has launched its fourth annual Explore Your Archive week, a campaign to increase awareness of the essential role of archives in society. A focus of this year’s campaign will be the growing importance of online archiving and the digitisation of valuable collections.

Explore Your Archive week is run jointly by ARAI and the UK's Archives and Records Association, and seeks to encourage people to discover the stories, facts, places and the people that are at the heart of Ireland’s communities. Archivists, record managers and conservators will host talks, workshops, exhibitions and tours of their unique collections from Saturday 19 November to Sunday 27 November.

Organisations participating in Explore Your Archive include business, university, state, military and specialist archives, both north and south of the border.

Many engaging online exhibitions and digitised collections are being launched as part of Explore Your Archive this year by a range of participants, including the Irish Traditional Music Archive, the IFI Irish Film Archive, Cork City and County Archives and many more. Additionally, the National Library of Ireland will host a talk outlining how it is capturing, preserving and making available the websites that tell the story of the 2016 commemorations for future generations.”

Events taking place during Explore Your Archive 2016 include:
  • ‘1916: Tales from the Other Side’, a new exhibition exploring minority experiences of 1916 hosted by Marsh’s Library.
  • The National Archives of Ireland will host a talk (22 November 6pm) on the newly published Report of The Survey of Hospital Records in Ireland. The talk will draw together archivists and historians to discuss the current state of Irish medical archives.
  • The Irish Architectural Archive will open the new exhibition ‘House and Home’, featuring more than 40 original architectural drawings, models and photographs of residential projects in Ireland.
  • A ‘story box’ to mark the 70th anniversary of rural electrification, including previously unseen photographs and other documents, will be launched by ESB Archives.
  • Dublin City Library and Archive together with Near FM will host a workshop to showcase the Near FM Archive, a digital audio archive with a particular emphasis on local arts, music, news, history, heritage and community events. The Archive has also generated the exhibition 'Dublin Remembers: Stories from the Somme’, focusing on personal stories of individual Irish men who fought at the Battle of the Somme, as well as seminars on popular theatre and on the First World War and the Somme with a range of expert speakers.
  • The IBVM (Loreto) Irish Province Archives will launch the new online exhibition and digital collection ‘Loreto 1916’ during Explore Your Archive week 2016. The exhibition captures the bewilderment, anxiety, fear and hunger of the Loreto Sisters and their pupils caught in the midst of the Easter Rising, as they sheltered from stray bullets, coped with food shortages, threatened evacuation, and watched Dublin city centre burn.
  • The Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland will launch a unique ‘story box’ on the RCSI during 1916 and the death of RCSI graduate Charles Hachette during the fighting. The story box also discusses how archival material relating to Charles's life was discovered following a call-out via social media to try and locate any relatives who may be able to put a face to his name.