Last Friday I attended the the latest virtual stakeholder forum meeting at PRONI (www.nidirect.gov.uk/proni). Here are the latest developments...
Stephen Scarth advised us that PRONI would be closed today (Monday) for the Queen's funeral, and reopened as normal tomorrow (Tuesday). As a consequence of the monarch's death the PRONI social media accounts have been largely silent during the official mourning period, as per all services from the NI civil service. The very good news is that PRONI expects to be heading back to almost pre-pandemic service level normality by the end of this month (September). The only real question mark has been over late night openings on Thursdays once again, which is still being considered.
As a consequence of Covid, visitor numbers are still down on pre-pandemic numbers, as folk find their way back to a new normality. Most events continue to be held online, which has actually boosted the numbers of attendees, a method which PRONI is keen to continue to employ due to its increased reach. There will be some on site events, but hybrid events are not quite as easy to organise. Forthcoming events are listed at https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/articles/talks-and-events-proni.
The PRONI director's position has been vacant for several months since the start of this year, with various folks taking on the responsibilities in short stints. As of this week it is hoped to have a temporary promotion in place for a member of staff to take on the role for a 3-4 month period, to provide a bit more continuity until a permanent appointee is made.
Laura Aguiar from the Nerve Centre's CollabArchive project advised us that a dedicated site is now up and running at www.collabarchive.org featuring the five projects funded by National Lottery Heritage funding. Records that have been digitised for this project will be added to the PRONI catalogue, and the transcriptions created by the initiative will be added to the descriptions of the records, making them searchable. Dr. Patrick Fitzgerald from the Mellon Centre for Migration Studies at Omagh (https://mellonmigrationcentre.com) noted that collaboration on the 'Leaving. Crossing. Arriving' project had been a very rewarding experience, a view reciprocated by Laura. The CollabArchive project is nearing the end of its funding, but it is hoped that further similar projects can be considered in the future.
There was no update on the latest PRONI cataloguing efforts at this meeting. Work continues on the new onsite catalogue - this won't affect how the online catalogue works, but when visiting onsite it will look quite different to the current system in use there.
Next year sees the 100th anniversary of the founding of PRONI, with an almost year long commemorative programme from June 2023 to March 2024. PRONI is seeking opportunities to work with partners to help celebrate its foundation, and has held initial talks with several. There will be a launch event on June 30th 2023, in the same month as the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. One major event for PRONI will be hosting the Archive and Records Association (ARA) conference in August 2023.
A bit of progress on new records also. I previously reported that PRONI had been working on an index to its digitised Northern Irish tithe applotment book records. This work was an expansion of an index created by a member of the public, which is being enhanced. Things had been quiet on this front for a few months as PRONI switched its efforts back to opening its facility again to the public after lockdown - however, PRONI is now once again working on these records, which will be made available to the public at some stage.
There is no further progress as yet on the upload of the wills calendars database extension, which will take the collection past 1965 as a cut off point (for complicated reasons to do with how the parent department makes updates to its resources online).
(With thanks to Stephen and Laura)
Chris
My new book Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records is now available to buy at https://bit.ly/IrishLandRecords. Also available - Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.
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