Deep History, Deepening Collaborations

52 Collecting History A New Research Network of International Library Partners Network Coordinator: Dr Sarah Hendriks, Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland Postdoctoral Research Fellow The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were ‘full of complaints about the embezzlement and loss of State documents’, wrote Herbert Wood, who was the Deputy Keeper of the Public Record Office of Ireland in 1922. The story of Ireland came to be scattered when departing Lords Lieutenant took records away to their home estates in Britain. These papers later made their way through private collections to major libraries overseas. Over 1,000 manuscript items relating to this period of Irish history have been identified in the Library of Trinity College Dublin, the British Library, the Bodleian Library in Oxford and Cambridge University Library. Now, with the cooperation of our Library partners, we can begin, digitally, to reunite these collections relating to the island of Ireland and its peoples. In the next three years these key libraries will come together to form a new International Libraries Network to share best practice and tackle the challenges and opportunities involved in reuniting separated collections. Forming part of Research Strand 1 —Retracing Archival Footsteps (see above, p. 18), Collecting History focuses on the people who collected Irish records — those expert antiquarians and enthusiasts who bought, sold, and used Irish manuscript material between 1600 and 1900. We will explore the meaning and value placed on these records across the centuries in Ireland and overseas, and how this affected perceptions of Irish history. Our most detailed research will explore dispersed collections that share a common history, for instance documents and manuscripts that once formed part of a single collection, but now are preserved in different locations. Understanding how and why these collections were created, who owned them and how writers intended to use the history they contain, will reveal valuable insights into Ireland’s complex story and contested history. Above: British Library, Cotton Titus X.