The Irish Jesuit Archives was closed for much of 2020 due to the global pandemic, and with Ireland in lockdown since early 2021, there is no sign of reopening anytime soon. So what has this home working archivist been up to?
The positive experience of collaborating with Offaly Archives, in making available a collection of papers via their archival platform, gave impetus to the decision to catalogue the Irish Jesuit Archives online. In 2020, using the open source cataloguing software AtoM, a skeleton for the catalogue consisting of authority records (linking people, places and subjects) was created. Fr Jim Culliton SJ helped with Jesuit research, which has also led to a digital biographical dictionary for Irish Jesuits. 5,000 descriptions (roughly 5% of the archival footprint) are now catalogued online, including:
- Irish Jesuit Colleges in Europe;
- Irish Jesuit Missions: Australia (1865-1930), the Isle of Man (1826-37) and Zambia (1946-1969);
- Irish Jesuit Chaplains in the First World War and Second World War;
- Coláiste Iognáid, Galway (1859-1958) and
- Twenty individual Jesuits papers.
https://www.jesuitarchives.ie/
Damien Burke
Province Archivist- Irish Jesuit Archives
Letter from Irish Jesuit Michael Morrison to his Provincial John R MacMahon SJ, Dublin, Ireland, describing his work as a chaplain at the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, 18 April 1945.
Photograph of Fr Tom O’Brien SJ (1932-1992) and the Canisius College football team, Chikuni, Northern Rhodesia, c.[1959].
catholicarchivesociety.org 