This article is from page 10 of the 2009-11-24 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 10 JPG
LIBRARY staff in Ennis are still as- sessing the level of damage caused by flooding at one of the county’s premier research centres.
Clare County Library’s Local Stud- ies Centre was hit by heavy flooding last Thursday along with the nearby De Valera Library in Ennis.
The centre houses a comprehen- sive collection of historic books and documents relating to the history of Clare and Irish society.
Speaking yesterday, County Li- brarian Helen Walsh said that one floor of the Local Studies Centre was damaged by flooding, along with the exhibition space in the De Valera L1- brary.
Ms Walsh said a clean-up operation FTES BUDMMENTO(oJ mc Niar-TemoLe lH emo LENE CeDneTess and that it was too early to determine the extent of the damage.
She added, “We’ve definitely had flooding and it appears extensive. We’d just been concentrating on get- ting out what we could. It’s hard to say what has been damaged.”
The centre aims to collect all pub- lished books relating to Clare, all books by Clare-born authors and any general publications containing Clare material. This Clare collec- tion contains approximately 2,000 titles dealing primarily with the his- tory, archaeology and topography of the county. Directories, almanacs, topographical dictionaries and un- published works such as theses and
projects are also part of the collec- tion. The Irish collection comprises approximately 8,000 works on all facets of Irish society.
The Local Studies Centre is a refer- ence library and research centre ded- icated to the collection of material on any aspect of County Clare.
The centre also houses a collec- tion of Irish interest material. Much of the material in the Local Studies Centre has been digitised and pub- lished online by the library’s Infor- mation Services Department, based in Library Headquarters.
The centre also contains a com- prehensive collection of Irish jour- nal titles including all major Irish historical and geographical publica- tions. Journals of specific relevance to Clare include The North Munster Antiquarian Journal, Dal gCais, The Other Clare, Molua, The Clare Asso- ciation Yearbook and Sliabh Aughty.