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LIBRARIES AND ARCHIVES 10: IRELAND C. J. WOODS AND R. J. HUNTER’ REPUBLIC OF IRELAND THE REPUBLIC OF IRELAND is, for historical reasons, a centralized state, and the visiting scholar will conveniently find his sources concentrated in the capital. Dublin possesses a rich legacy of libraries, all of them repositories for manuscripts also. Its archives, in contrast, are depleted, dispersed or neglected. Since independence in 1922 there has been no serious attempt to form a national archival policy until very recently when an initiative was taken by Professor R. Dudley Edwards and others in the establishment of a Department of Archives at University College, Dublin. In general, formalities in Ireland are few and librarians and keepers will admit freely all able to identify themselves as bona fide research workers. The main libraries (Trinity College Library, the National Library of Ireland and the Royal Irish Academy Library) are situated in the city centrewithin a quarter square mile. The first two of these usually remain open late in the evening. Beyond the Dublin ‘Pale’ only Cork is really worth attention and this for its Cork Public Library and County Library with their collections of regional interest. There are no county record offices such as exist in England though most county libraries have a few MS. deposits. The intention here is merely to give a brief account of libraries and archives of interest to visiting historians. The reader desiring a more detailed and comprehensive account should refer to T. P. O’Neill and D. J. Clarke, ‘Libraries in Ireland’ in A n Leabhar- lann: Journal of the Library Association of Ireland, Xiii (1955), pp. 67-80. Trinity College Library in Dublin (established 1591) has been since 1801 one of the half-dozen libraries entitled to a free copy of every book published in the United Kingdom. By now it holds just over one million volumes. The library is closed for a fortnight in July between dates indicated in the Dublin University Calendar. It is only fair to warn the prospective reader that the cataloguing system is both complicated and inefficient. The basic Catalogue ofprinted books . . . (9 vols., Dublin, 1864-87) lists accessions up to 1872, Service of books can be slow and frustrating; however, newspapers and MSS. can be delivered in a matter of minutes; moreover there is open access to many important printed works including all British and Irish official publications, most of the calendars of British official papers and numerous bibliographical and biographical works. The Guide to the Library of Trinity College, Dublin (Dublin, 1972), is supplemented by various infor- mation sheets, all available free. l Dr. Woods, a research assistant at the Royal Irish Academy, is responsible for the section on the Republic of Ireland, and Mr. Hunter, a lecturer at the New University of Ulster, for that on Northern Ireland. 392

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LIBRARIES A N D ARCHIVES 10: IRELAND

C. J. W O O D S AND R . J. H U N T E R ’

R E P U B L I C O F I R E L A N D

THE REPUBLIC OF IRELAND is, for historical reasons, a centralized state, and the visiting scholar will conveniently find his sources concentrated in the capital. Dublin possesses a rich legacy of libraries, all of them repositories for manuscripts also. Its archives, in contrast, are depleted, dispersed or neglected. Since independence in 1922 there has been no serious attempt to form a national archival policy until very recently when an initiative was taken by Professor R. Dudley Edwards and others in the establishment of a Department of Archives at University College, Dublin. In general, formalities in Ireland are few and librarians and keepers will admit freely all able to identify themselves as bona fide research workers. The main libraries (Trinity College Library, the National Library of Ireland and the Royal Irish Academy Library) are situated in the city centrewithin a quarter square mile. The first two of these usually remain open late in the evening. Beyond the Dublin ‘Pale’ only Cork is really worth attention and this for its Cork Public Library and County Library with their collections of regional interest. There are no county record offices such as exist in England though most county libraries have a few MS. deposits. The intention here is merely to give a brief account of libraries and archives of interest to visiting historians. The reader desiring a more detailed and comprehensive account should refer to T. P. O’Neill and D. J. Clarke, ‘Libraries in Ireland’ in An Leabhar- lann: Journal of the Library Association of Ireland, Xiii (1955), pp. 67-80.

Trinity College Library in Dublin (established 1591) has been since 1801 one of the half-dozen libraries entitled to a free copy of every book published in the United Kingdom. By now it holds just over one million volumes. The library is closed for a fortnight in July between dates indicated in the Dublin University Calendar. It is only fair to warn the prospective reader that the cataloguing system is both complicated and inefficient. The basic Catalogue ofprinted books . . . (9 vols., Dublin, 1864-87) lists accessions up to 1872, Service of books can be slow and frustrating; however, newspapers and MSS. can be delivered in a matter of minutes; moreover there is open access to many important printed works including all British and Irish official publications, most of the calendars of British official papers and numerous bibliographical and biographical works. The Guide to the Library of Trinity College, Dublin (Dublin, 1972), is supplemented by various infor- mation sheets, all available free.

l Dr. Woods, a research assistant at the Royal Irish Academy, is responsible for the section on the Republic of Ireland, and Mr. Hunter, a lecturer at the New University of Ulster, for that on Northern Ireland.

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C. J. WOODS AND R. J. HUNTER 393 Of scarcely any less importance for historical research is the National

Library of Ireland, Kildare Street, Dublin 2, which contains over 3 million volumes plus major deposits of periodicals, pamphlets, newspapers, micro- films, maps, photographs and MSS. Its nucleus was until 1877 the library of the Royal Dublin Society, a body founded in 1731 for the encouragement of agriculture and industry and for long in receipt of parliamentary grants. A veritable Mecca for Irish specialists, the National Library contains much to interest purely British historians too and duplicates most of the basic research texts found at Trinity College. It also contains a collection of printed works and microfilms on France, c. 1650-1871. The collection of Irish newspapers is, in size, second only to the B.M. collection at Colindale, but the files of several British daily papers dating from the early nineteenth century are temporarily unavailable. The microfilm collection includes Irish MSS. in repositories all over Europe but it is badly catalogued and the apparatus for viewing it is quite inadequate. The library is officially closed for three weeks every August, but sometimes visiting scholars can obtain permission from the Director to make use of the very limited service still provided. There are detailed author and subject catalogues, but accessions since 1959, unfor- tunately, are not included and can be traced only with great difficulty. Delivery of items takes only ten minutes.

The third research library is that of the Royal Irish Academy, 19 Dawson Street, Dublin 2, an institute founded for the promotion of science, polite literature and antiquities in 1785 and established at its present premises since 1854. The library is primarily of interest to historians specializing in Irish or Celtic studies. However, its rich Haliday collection of over 3,000 volumes of pamphlets from 1578 and its unusual collection of 1,700 current and 600 non-current periodicals and other serial publications both have a wider coverage. The library’s advantage is its compactness. There is open access or delivery within five minutes. It closes for three weeks in August. For lop the reader can buy The Royal Irish Academy and its library: a brief description (Dublin, 1971), but this needs to be supplemented by the librarian’s current information leaflet.

There are minor libraries of specialist interest. Marsh’s Library, near St. Patrick’s Cathedral, with over 20,000 volumes is the library amassed by Archbishop Narcissus Marsh (1638-1713) with some eighteenth-century accessions. The Representative Church Body Library, Braemor Park, Dublin 14, has some 20,000 volumes relating to the Church of Ireland (Protestant episcopal). The Franciscan Library, Killiney, Co. Dublin, one section of which was formed at Louvain early in the seventeenth century, is of interest to the historian, as is the library of the famous Maynooth Col- lege, 15 miles to the west of Dublin. A library largely ignored by historians (perhaps because admission is not readily granted) until valuable items from it appeared in Sotheby’s catalogues in 1972 is that of the King’s Inns on Henrietta Street, Dublin 1, though it houses some 100,000 volumes and was once (1801-36) a copyright library. Also little known is the Chester Beatty Library, 20 Shrewsbury Road, Dublin 4, a treasury of oriental books and

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394 LIBRARIES AND ARCHIVES 10: IRELAND

MSS., on which various printed guides are available. The Dublin Public Library on Pearse Street, Dublin 2, contains the books, MSS. and news- papers collected by Sir John Gilbert, the archivist and antiquarian, to which a printed catalogue exists. This list of libraries is summary and incomplete.

Irish historians the world over acknowledge the Dublin libraries as invalu- able, but how many British historians appreciate the importance of Dublin for their subject? Surely Dublin is to British history what Helsinki is to Russian : an evacuated provincial capital with its imperial repositories intact.

Manuscript collections are to be found in all the libraries mentioned above. MSS. of Irish interest, in Ireland or elsewhere, are catalogued in R. J. Hayes, Manuscript sources for the history of Irish civilisation (11 vols., Boston, 1965). It is the National Library of Ireland which in recent years has become the main repository for private papers. The Hayes catalogue is, in fact, used there as a working catalogue and has been updated to July 1970 by a shelf-list of additional material. The keeping of official papers is still very largely governed by the Public Records (Ireland) Act, 1867 (30 & 31 Vict., c. 70). There are two main repositories. The records relating to the adminis- tration of Ireland during the period 1790-1922 and of the Ddil Eireann general secretariat, 1919-22, are in the State Paper Office, Dublin Castle. Other official records (principally those of the higher courts of law, a few government departments and testamentary documents), plus some collec- tions of private papers (some of them business records), can be found at the Public Record Office, Four Courts, Dublin 7. Both offices open Monday to Friday only. Unfortunately two circumstances have combined to limit the usefulness of the P.R.O. One is the almost complete loss of the records in the explosion which destroyed the Four Courts on 30 June 1922 during the civil war. The addition since then of various records antedating 1922 and of copies of some of those destroyed has made but small recompense. The other circumstance is the absence in the 1867 act of any mandate to government departments to deposit their records incrementally. Some departments, of both pre- and post-independence creation (e.g. Board of Works, Department of Industry and Commerce), have made deposits voluntarily but most keep their records in situ (e.g. Land Commission, Department of Finance, Depart- ment of Foreign Affairs). Other official records are those of various registries, the most notable being the Registry of Deeds, Henrietta Street, and the Valua- tion Office, 6 Ely Place, Dublin 2. The first of these was established in 1708 and is invaluable for almost any study of eighteenth-century Ireland. As for ecclesiastical records, Church of Ireland material is scattered ; Catholic diocesan archives are, if extant, in the possession of the local bishop (e.g. Dublin, Cashel); Quaker records are at 6 Eustace Street, Dublin 2, while most Presbyterian and Methodist records are in Belfast (see also below).

There is not yet a printed guide to the State Paper Office but see Breandan Mac Giolla Choille’s ‘Fenian documents in the State Paper Office’ in Irish Historical Studies, xvi (1968-9), pp. 258-84, and the introductorychapters of his Intelligence Notes, 1913-16 (Dublin, 1966). ‘A short guide to the Public

C. J . WOODS AND R. J. HUNTER 395 Record Office of Ireland‘ by Margaret Griffith exists as an article in Irish Historical Studies, viii (1952-3), pp. 45-58, and as a pamphlet issued by the Dublin Stationery Office (revised edition, 1964). The official reports of the deputy keeper, which deal with both the Public Record Office and the State Paper Office, began in 1869 as annuals but are now very occasional. Another useful article is P. B. Phair’s ‘Guide to the Registry of Deeds’ in Analecta Hibernica, xxiii (1966), pp. 257-76. It should be realized that many documents relating to Ireland (including duplicates of material in Dublin) lie in the Public Record Office in London and are indicated under Colonial Office and Home Office in the well-known Guide.

N O R T H E R N I R E L A N D

Only three libraries of pre-nineteenth-century foundation survive. The Derry and Raphoe Diocesan Library (Church of Ireland), London Street, London- derry, with origins in the later seventeenth century, has many sixteenth- and seventeenth-century printings, mainly theological, and a total stock of 8,500 volumes. Armagh Public Library, Abbey Street, Armagh, established by episcopal endowment in 1770 for public use, has over 35,000 volumes. The Linen Hall Library, officially the Belfast Library and Society for Pro- moting Knowledge, 17 Donegall Square North, Belfast, a subscription library established in 1788, is, with 250,000 volumes, the most important research library in Northern Ireland. Among its special features are an Irish collection (including Belfast printings), Belfast newspapers, and Northern Ireland political literature post-1968, also some 500 MSS. It published a Catalogue of’the books in the Irish section . . . in 1917. Belfast Public Library, Royal Avenue, Belfast, established in 1888, has an Irish collection, Belfast newspapers and, altogether, 3 million volumes. See its Catalogue of books and bound MSS. of the Irish . . . library of the late Francis Joseph Bigger (Belfast, 1930). The other public libraries, though very much smaller, as well as the university libraries, hold local collections. The libraries of the religious denominations (apart from the two first-mentioned libraries) are very small. Catholic diocesan libraries are normally in the seminary or grammar school which exists in each diocese, e.g. St. Malachy’s College, Belfast, St. Patrick‘s College, Armagh, St. Columb’s College, Londonderry.

The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, 66 Balmoral Avenue, Belfast, was established in 1924 with responsibility for the records of govern- ment departments and the courts, but it has also collected an extensive body of private papers in the manner of English county record offices. It is par- ticularly rich in estate papers and business records from the end of the seven- teenth century. It holds, or can advise on the location of, most local govern- ment archives, and also has a file on the location of Northern Ireland news- papers. See Reports of the deputy keeper . . . (Belfast, 1924- ). Armagh Public Library has a small MS. collection, largely seventeenth and eigh- teenth century. See James Dean, Catalogue of MSS. in the Public Library of Armagh (Dundalk, 1928). The Armagh Archiepiscopal Registry, 5 Vicars

396 LIBRARIES AND ARCHIVES 10 : IRELAND

Hill, Armagh, contains MSS. of local ecclesiastical interest (see H. W. Love, Records of the archbishops of Armagh (Dundalk, 1965)), as do the Down and Connor and Dromore Diocesan Library, 10 May Street, Belfast, and the Chapter House, St. Columb’s Cathedral, Londonderry. Catholic diocesan archives, normally post-1800, are generally in the diocesan libraries. The Armagh archives, however, are kept by the Rev. Secretary, Ara Coeli, Armagh. The Presbyterian Historical Society of Ireland, Church House, Fisherwick Place, Belfast, established in 1906, has an important collection of MSS. on Irish Presbyterianism. In common with collections in others of the smaller Ulster repositories, it is not mentioned by Hayes, but there is a catalogue in Proceedings of the Presbyterian Historical Society of Ireland, 1926-7. Consult also Magee University College Library, Londonderry, and the Presbyterian College, Botanic Avenue, Belfast. The Wesley Historical Society (Irish Branch), Aldergate House, Belfast, with a smaller collection, serves a similar purpose for Irish Methodism. At the Friends’ Meeting House, Railway Street, Lisburn, Co. Antrim, are preserved the records of various Quaker meetings in Ulster since 1674. See 0. C. Goodbody, Guide to Irish Quaker records (Dublin, 1967).

The Ulster Museum, Stranmillis Road, Belfast, has a photograph collec- tion from the late nineteenth century; the Ulster Folk Museum, Cultra Manor, Holywood, Co. Down, has folklore and dialect collections; and the County Museum, Armagh, has a small county MS. collection.