Day 9: Belfast
Today we spent the day at the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland (also known as PRONI).
Before the Irish Civil War, all of Ireland’s records were sent to Dublin. However, the Dublin Records Office was a casualty of the Irish Civil War, and burned down in 1922. PRONI was founded a year later, and was one of the first offices established in Northern Ireland. PRONI is both the national and local records office in Northern Ireland. While a public records office, PRONI has both public and private records. They had to do a lot of rebuilding of the records collection in their first few years, relying heavily on church records. But the Troubles led to a rush to bring materials to PRONI. To this day, they are still behind on cataloging all of materials brought in during the Troubles.
PRONI has a collection of audiovisual recordings as part of the Prisons Memory Archive. The recordings were done at the former Armagh and the Maze/Long Kesh prisons, where many political prisoners were held during the Troubles. Participants include former prisoners, wardens, priests/pastors, visitors, doctors, lawyers, journalists, and more. The Prisons Memory Archive has an ethical framework of co-ownership, life storytelling, and inclusivity. 38 participants have their interviews posted on to the website, www.prisonsmemoryarchive.com.
We talked a great deal about archiving in Northern Ireland, PRONI’s process for digital archiving, how PRONI operates, and had a ‘behind the scenes’ tour to see their stacks, the conservation room, and their reprographics suite (where they work with old photographs).
Most importantly, we got registered with PRONI so that we can request items from the collection and enter their search and reading rooms. These are good for 10 years, so having one seems like a good excuse to come back to Ireland!
Not a lot of photos today, but I did get a few good ones!
