The HardiBlog

This year’s culture night takes place on the 22 September. Culture night is an annual all-island public event that celebrates culture, creativity and the arts. The James Hardiman Library is holding an evening of talks and an exhibition to celebrate culture. The focus of the talks is on community development with the focus on materials from the Muintir na Tíre collection as well as volumes from the 19 th century printed collections. The James Hardiman Library’s collections hold a rich source of material on local and community studies. In the archives we have collections from The Abbey Theatre, The Gate Theatre, Professor Kevin Boyle, Brendan Duddy, Ritchie-Pickow, Éamon de Buitléar, Tim Robinson and Druid Theatre company to name but a few. The James Hardiman Library has recently acquired the archive of Muintir na Tíre, a national voluntary organisation dedicated to promoting the process of community development. A series of blogs have been written about the work to d...

The library hosted a pleasant hand-over event on 8 September, when members of the extended Colohan family, living in Australia and the UK, visited Special Collections. They were here to present us with a bible that had first left Galway 154 years ago, when it was presented to John Colohan by his father, Professor Nicholas Colohan. John had graduated in Medicine from what was then Queen's College, Galway in 1857. He subsequently took a post as Surgeon General in the British Army. His work took him to various parts of the world including South Africa, before he settled in Australia. His descendant, Seán Colohan, and his family, have now decided that the bible should be kept in the care of the library's Special Collections. They had first visited the University on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of its opening in 1999 and have been back to Galway several times since. Our picture shows Seán with the historic bible. On his right is Monica Crump, our Head of Collections, and to...

In my last blog I wrote about the various stages of work that an archivist does in preparing a collection to make it accessible in the reading room. Having completed the arrangement (almost) I have now started describing the collection. These descriptions will provide researchers with sign posts to what is contained in a file or bound volume. The material I have been cataloguing in the collection so far has been mainly financial records and governance records of Muintir na Tíre. The financial records of Muintir na Tíre contain various ledgers detailing membership, income and expenditure, annual reports and petty cash books. The annual reports of Muintir na Tíre date back as far as 1945. Below is an example of the annual report from 1974. These records provide a great understanding of the financial position of Muintir na Tíre throughout its history.              The ledgers dealing with membership provide us with the details of ...