Dublin City Libraries and Archive have put images and special collections online.
The Digital Collections Gallery has 529 images and counting. There are photographs from the 1974 Dublin Bombings; Dublin’s Sporting Heritage which honours the fact that Dublin was made European Capital of Sport in 2010; Vanishing Dublin shows places that have disappeared or changed completely in the last half of the twentieth century; Dublin Pubs provides images of pubs both past and present; and Working for the City which is photographs of Dublin City staff at work.
The sporting heritage photos that sparked memories for me were the Liffey Swim of 1999, the Royal Dublin Horseshow and Landsdowne Road. My grandfather won the Liffey Swim when he was a young man. We used to go to the Royal Dublin Horseshow if we were in town when it was on and Landsdowne Road was near where my grandparents lived.
The saddest one for me was Vanishing Dublin. In some of the pictures you would not recognize the area anymore. The photo of Moore Street in 1959 brought back fond memories. I can remember in the 1970s going down to Moore Street and the ladies still used perambulators to transport their wares. Moore Street today is still a market place but things have changed.
The Working for the City gallery is a reminder of how the way we do things sometimes does not change. The cleansing department is a couple of men with brushes pushing two bins on a cart. I remember the Liffey clean up in 1976.
The next gallery is Improvement Works which is current improvements to two libraries in Dublin.
The last gallery is Treasures from the Collections. Capital Letters shows a few of the collections they own by Irish authors. Celebrate! is about festivals, feasts, civic events and commemorations that were held in Dublin. Here you will find a souvenir of the Parnell monument unveiling in 1911, a photograph of the royal visit in 1911, the Papal visit in 1979 and a yearbook from the Dalkey Festival in 1989 amongst other items.
Getting Around provides images of maps and other items relating to the theme. Unfortunately they are not the complete item but snippets. Other collections include Little Treasures which contains material related to children, Rich and Rare which showcases books, manuscripts and broadsheets held by Dublin City Public Libraries, and Women’s Health and Wellbeing which features advertisements promoting “medicines” marketed towards women.
The photographs were most interesting to me. The other items provide a small image and not much else because you have to go into Dublin City Public Libraries & Archive to view the originals and to find out more.
©2011 – Blair Archival Research