Archives and Records Association (Ireland)

11/05/2026

11/05/2026

08/05/2026

Join us on Thursday, 28th of May, at 1pm for the next lecture in the ARA Ireland series - Self-archiving: The benefits of a Toolkit for Artists’ Archiving for diversity and inclusion in the collections at the National Irish Visual Arts Library (NIVAL) by Ruth Hallinan.

NIVAL, based at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, collects stories of the development of art across the island of Ireland from 1900 to the present. NIVAL has developed a toolkit for artists’ archiving with practical templates and prompts to help artists of any level of experience or background. To ensure the accessibility of this toolkit, the document is free to download and will be supported by a series of free workshops for artists across Ireland in 2026. Through this process, NIVAL aims to challenge the disproportionate representations in its collections, ensuring that the plurality and cultural richness of contemporary Irish art and design is well documented and freely available for research.

The National Irish Visual Arts Library (NIVAL) is an initiative of NCAD in partnership with the Arts Council of Ireland. Since 1997, NIVAL has become the foremost centre for the documentation of contemporary art and design in Ireland and holds arguably the largest public-access artist book collection in Ireland. Assistant Manager, Ruth Hallinan, has presented at various festivals and conferences including the Irish Book Trade conference, International Publishers Association conference, Art Libraries Society (ARLIS) conference, Dublin Book Festival and Dublin Art Book Fair. She was named as one of the 150 most influential people in publishing by The Bookseller in 2021 and 2022.

Tickets are available through Eventbrite - https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/self-archiving-the-benefits-of-a-toolkit-for-artists-tickets-1985517055963?aff=ebdsoporgprofile&_gl=1*mvhwgf*_up*MQ..*_ga*NTQ4MTYzNjYyLjE3NzgxNTg2MzA.*_ga_TQVES5V6SH*czE3NzgxNTg2MjkkbzEkZzAkdDE3NzgxNTg2MjkkajYwJGwwJGgw

07/05/2026

✨ Job fairy ✨

Project Archivist, the Robert and Nelofer Fisk Archive and Library

This role, within the Library at Trinity College Dublin, will involve Project Management oversight of the archival description, research, and public presentation of the Robert and Nelofer Fisk Archive and Library. The post-holder will be experienced in archival project management, archival description and digital preservation, particularly pertaining to contemporary archives in hybrid formats. To be successful in the role, the Project Archivist will be required to develop a detailed project plan outlining timelines and tasks, particularly in relation to cross-department working. Knowledge of historical events of the mid-late twentieth century, up to the present day, (particularly relating to The Troubles in Northern Ireland and conflict in the Balkans and in the Middle East) will be highly valuable. Reading coherence of Arabic would be of benefit, in translating and interpreting source documents and international publications. As funding for the project is advanced, the post holder may be expected to line manage archival staff and will have routine interaction with other departments in the Library to fulfil the preservation (digital and analogue) of this collection. Therefore, experience in matrix management structures will be important.

Specific purpose contract, full-time.

Assistant Librarian 1 Salary Scale (€59,589- €90,543 per annum)
Closing date: 27 May 2026 12:00

Applications via the Trinity Recruitment Portal: https://www.tcd.ie/hr/vacancies/

01/05/2026

A little bank holiday homework for you. This May we are looking at and on this day in 1914 County Surveyor, W.E. L'Estrange Duffin was dashing off his report on works. In his rush he has left me with a couple of questions about his handwriting. In his last paragraph he is writing about a retaining wall that needs repair following floods but I am not sure of the name of the Cove that he mentions it being near. At first I thought the wall "indecent in several places" but a closer look reads "undercut in several places". Any suggestions for the name of the Cove he mentions? Explore Your Archive Waterford City and County Libraries Waterford City and County Council

01/05/2026

The Explore Your Archive theme for Bealtaine | May is |

Get involved and remember to tag 🏷️ Archives and Records Association (Ireland) & Explore Your Archive in your posts

27/04/2026

How to start a new archives service: experience of the CIÉ Group Archives by Dr Kevin Forkan.
Join the Irish Society for Archives for their upcoming lecture in Dublin City Library & Archive on Wednesday 6 May at 6pm.

Tickets are available ⬇️

Learn how the CIÉ archives service was put in place to store the records held by the group, and future plans for the historic collections.

15/04/2026

🚨 Attention members 🚨

Have you ever wanted to be a part of the ARA Ireland committee.

Three roles are up for grabs at the upcoming AGM on 30th April:
• Honorary Secretary
• Campaigns Officer
• Honorary Treasurer

This is a great opportunity to get involved, contribute to the profession, enhance your professional portfolio and widen your professional network!

If you’re interested in putting yourself forward, or would like to learn more about what’s involved, we’d love to hear from you.

Further information on each role is available on the ARA Ireland website - https://www.araireland.ie/news.

If you would like to submit an expression of interest, or have an informal chat, please feel free to get in touch at [email protected]
or contact our Chair, Niamh Ní Charra, directly at [email protected]

13/04/2026

Join us next Tuesday, 21st April, at 1pm for the next lecture in the ARA Ireland series - The Last Hard Man': Finding Intersectional Marginalisation in the Archive

This lecture will reflect on the insights into the experience of marginalisation and the challenges of reading those writings.

Karl Crawley’s life was a snapshot of intersectional marginalisation in late-20th century Ireland. The child of an ‘English divorce’, he grew up in extreme poverty. He spent long periods in orphanages where he experienced institutional abuse. Most of his adolescence was passed in industrial schools before ‘graduating’ to Mountjoy Prison. Here he developed a reputation for daring escapes – once he carved a replica gun from a book about meditation and held up a group of prison officers. Here he also developed mental health difficulties. At one point the prison transport from Mountjoy to the Central Mental Hospital was nicknamed the ‘Crawley Bus’ because he had spent so much time in it. In a case at the European Commission on Human Rights, he argued that his treatment in prison amounted to torture. To keep him restrained, he alleged, staff constantly fed him sedatives. This led him into the drug scene, which ultimately led to his death from AIDS-related pneumonia.
Crawley lived and died at the intersection of experiences that often go unrecorded –drug-use, mental health in extreme poverty, imprisonment, the long-term effects of institutionalisation and abuse. However, he breaks this pattern. He has left us with hundreds of pages or archival material, much of which is in his own hand – including letters and fragments of an autobiography. This lecture will reflect on the insights into the experience of marginalisation that Crawley’s writing gives us, and the challenges of reading those writings both with and against the grain.
Dr Oisín Wall is a historian of marginalised communities and a Lecturer at UCC’s Radical Humanities Laboratory and School of History. He has published two books, Prisoners’ Bodies (McGill-Queens University Press: 2025), which explored the history of ordinary prisoner’s activism in 20th century Ireland; and The British Anti-Psychiatrists (Routledge: 2017), which explored the intersection of psychiatry and the counterculture in 1960s London. He is currently working on a history of he**in use in modern Ireland.

Tickets are available via Eventbrite ⬇️
https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/the-last-hard-man-finding-intersectional-marginalisation-in-the-archive-tickets-1985443389625?aff=odcleoeventsincollection