Floods at Glucksman Gallery, UCC

‘Clean-up begins at prestigious art gallery’

184 pieces of works in the Glucksman Gallery, University College Cork, including pieces by O’Donoghue, Le Brocquy, and Gale were damaged by floods. The artworks were stored in the basement, adjacent to the River Lee. The release of water from the Inniscarra Dam as well as heavy rainfall, resulted in the worst flooding in living memory in Cork. The speed of the flooding made the warnings of water ingress to the building ineffectual. The Gallery has implemented its disaster management plan and hopefully with the speed of the gallery’s response, all works can be restored.

What lessons can be learnt from this flooding?  Firstly, implement a flooding plan for the Cork area and secondly, reassess the location of storage of artworks, especially along a river. The building has won many awards including ‘One of the 1001 Buildings you must see before you die’ however did the builders assess the possibility of flooding when locating storage in the basement?

An interview with Fiona Kearney, Director, Lewis Glucksman Gallery, University College Cork on Radio RTE One was aired today.

Up Cork Archives & IMMA

Two articles from Saturday’s Irish Times caught my eye. Firstly, on page 2 of the main paper, Mary Leland described plans for the handing over of the family archive of the Blarney Castle estate in Cork to the Cork City and County Archive Centre, ‘The collection is described by archivist Brian McGee as the most important collection of landed estate papers to be acquired by the centre. It is a substantial grouping of very high quality material which will be of great interest, and we are also delighted that it was given to us freely and whole-heartedly.’

Secondly, on page one of the Weekend Review, a notice indicated that a ‘Public Forum on Amalgamation‘ initiated by the Irish Museum of Modern Art will take place on Wednesday, 18 November 2009. This will discuss the amalgamation of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Ireland and the Crawford Art Gallery in Cork. This forum is to be encouraged and praised. When and where is the public forum on the merger of the National Archives of Ireland, the Irish Manuscripts Commission into the National Library of Ireland?

Merger of National Archives of Ireland: Update

Last Wednesday, 21 October 2009, the issue of the merger of the National Archives and the Irish Manuscripts Commission into the National Library was briefly discussed in the Dail. John O’ Mahony , Mary Upton and Olivia Mitchell asked questions of Martin Mansergh, relating to the merger on issues such as time-frames, staffing, costs, locations etc… No concrete information was forthcoming. This is not surprising. Link

Deputy Olivia Mitchell: I am not questioning the quality of the work being done, which I agree is incredible given the conditions in which staff are working. I accept that the Minister of State is not responsible for bringing forward legislation in the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism, but will he convey to the Minister the degree of urgency attaching to this issue?

Deputy Martin Mansergh: The policy decision is made by the Department concerned – in most of the cases we are discussing it is the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism – after which the Office of Public Works comes into play in terms of finding solutions, particularly space solutions and so on. A considerable amount of work has been done in the background in the past two or three years. The main issue, as with everything else, is funding.

National Library of Ireland – Sources & Mergers

The National Library of Ireland has launched a new database, SOURCES, which they say ‘will revolutionise the finding of source material for Irish research… contains over 180,000 catalogue records for Irish manuscripts, and for articles in Irish periodicals.’ Revolutionise is a strong word to use however it is interesting to see the use of XML (Extensible Markup Language), Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS) and open source software in this project

The job specification for Director of the National Library of Ireland has been brought to my attention. It mentions that one of the duties of the new Director will be ‘Planning, managing and organising the merger of the Irish Manuscripts Commission and the National Archives of Ireland into the National Library’. In the 2009 Budget delivered by the Minister for Finance on 15 October 2008, it was announced that the Irish Manuscripts Commission and the National Archives of Ireland would be merged into the National Library of Ireland. What effect will this merger have on the archivists, record mangers, conservators and librarians of Ireland? What effect will this merger have on keeping records in Ireland?

Pue’s Occurrences & Web Watching For Archivists

Two blogs caught my attention over the last week. A researcher pointed me in the direction of Pue’s Occurrences and I have been mighty impressed by the range and quality of the output therein. The self-styled ‘Irish History blog’ has just celebrated its 100th post and I especially like the custom header.

The second blog Web Watching For Archivists has helped me find information and links to Web 2.0 and Archives 2.0. I like the idea that ‘The era of control is over:You can either stay in the bunker, or you can jump out there and try to participate, to not participate is criminal’.

WDYTYA Series 2: The Good and Bad

‘Who do you think you are’ has returned for a second series on RTE One with a varying degree of success. The Late Late host and JFK connoisseur himself, Ryan Turbridy was the subject of the first episode while the former politician cum bookie/tv presenter Ivan Yates was the subject of the second installment. The two episodes were different in what they meant to the subjects: Tubridy believed that he could feel the hand of history guiding him throughout ‘his journey’ from the  West of Ireland to Runnymeade while Yates, rightful proud of his forebears, the Jameson’s and Marconi’s, put the whole WDYTYA 2 into context when he said that although they may be silverware about, ‘it will not butter the parsnips’. The second series differs to the first, as it annoyingly doesn’t give you the title or location of the person speaking on screen.

Ireland 1911 Census – Bualadh Bos

The digitisation by the National Archives of Ireland to  the 1911 census for all 32 counties of Ireland, is complete and searchable online. This invaluable resource is fully indexed by name, with free access to the digitised images of the original manuscript household forms. Media coverage to this has been lacking and inaccurate.  Eunan O’ Halpin rightly compliments the National Archives of Ireland in a letter the Irish Times today, Census Project on a ‘Shoestring’.

Archive Awareness 2009

I attended the launch of Archives Awareness 2009 in the GUINNESS STOREHOUSE® on the 20th August 2009. Vincent Browne an Irish journalist, commentator and TV presenter, gave a brief but stirring endorsement to the work of archives, archivists and conservators, along with some funny anecdotes regarding the phone tapping scandal in Ireland in the 1980’s, which he was a victim of.

The Archive Awareness Campaign encourages members of the public to discover the truth about Ireland’s rich Archival heritage.