Summer Stars runs from Tues 4 June to Sat 31 August. Get Reading! Now that school is over you can still spark your imagination, join in activities and take part in our exciting Summer Stars challenge.
Twentieth anniversary of the passing of Éamonn Mac Thomáis
His videos have hundreds of thousands of views across YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, though he had never heard of any of them. He has inspired a whole new generation of social historians that were born after he died.
Six Stolpersteine ‘stumbling stones’ were unveiled by Holocaust Education Ireland and Dublin City Council today (01.06.22) to remember each of the Irish citizens who were victims of the Holocaust. The unveiling took place at a commemorative event at St. Catherine’s National School in Dublin 8.
This fourth volume in the very popular History on your Doorstep series returns to the approach taken in the first two books, in which the Historians in Residence contributed short pieces about the history, locations and people they had encountered in their work in the different areas administered by Dublin City Council.
Introducing Transcription Week, a call for participation
You don’t need to attend any workshops to take part, just register an account on https://europeana.transcribathon.eu/ and when the Dublin material is released start transcribing!
To take part email [email protected] and get in touch.
At the outbreak of the First World War, Monica Roberts was a young upper-class woman who lived at Kelston, Stillorgan, Co. Dublin. Together with her friends, she set up a 'Band of Helpers to the Soldiers' to provide gifts and comforts to men at the Western Front, who were members of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers or the Royal Flying Corps. The group sent cigarettes and tobacco, socks and vaseline for tired feet, handkerchiefs, boot-laces, chocolate, peppermint, oxo and dried fruit. Monica Roberts included a letter with her gifts and the recipients replied to her, setting up a correspondence. The letters from the soldiers give a vivid picture of conditions at the Front, and also include comments on contemporary politics. Of particular interest are remarks from soldiers regarding the 1916 Rising. Included in the collection and available here online is Monica Roberts' contemporary diary from Easter Week 1916, which includes her eye-witness account of the Rising.The collection contains 453 letters from 56 soldiers, who are mainly from the lower ranks; there is only one letter from Monica Roberts. These letters were kept for many years by Monica's daughter Mary Shackleton, who gave them to Tom Burke M.B.E., Chairman of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers Association. Since 2005, the collection has been housed in Dublin City Library and Archive, as part of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers Association Archive. We would be particularly interested in hearing from descendants of those soldiers featured in the collection, or indeed from anyone holding letters from Monica Roberts to the soldiers. Please e-mail [email protected] online publication of the Monica Roberts Collection is a Dublin City Council project, under the direction of Margaret Hayes, Dublin City Librarian, Brendan Teeling, Deputy City Librarian and Dr. Mary Clark, Dublin City Archivist. Project management is by Ellen Murphy, Senior Archivist, Dublin City Archives. Initial arrangement and cataloguing of the collection was by the late Andrew O'Brien, while scanning of the collection is by Christian Keegan, both of Dublin City Archives. Each letter was carefully transcribed by Finola Frawley of Dublin City Archives, who also translated letters written in French. A guide to the collection was prepared by Lisa Murphy, Dublin City Archives Intern (2012). Preparation of the collection for online publication is by genealogist John Grenham, who provided full text searching, and linked the original documents to the transcripts.Dublin City Council is publishing these letters online as part of its programme for the Decade of Commemorations, 1913-1923.Access A Guide to the Monica Roberts Collection (pdf, 1.77mb)Also Monica Roberts: List of Letters (pdf, 389kb)
Libraries are places of inspiration, escape and shelter for many. Now, with coronavirus having affected the arts and culture sector deeply, it's more important than ever to support those libraries we do have, which, as well as helping to create book lovers, also often provide things like wifi and computer access and help with accessing local services, and act as a community hub.