Conservation Engagement and Outreach

Exhibitions

Conservation facilitate the loaning-out of records for exhibitions. For further information, you can view our guidance on requesting PRONI records for loan.

Following a request from the borrowing organisation, conservation will condition assess the documents to ascertain their suitability for loan. If PRONI accepts the loan request then conservation liaise with the curators on environmental conditions, mounts and transport. 

Table with around 7 archival photographs and letters on display. A pair of hands is visible steadying one of the items.
Large book open in a v shape with a support under the spine. The open pages display line drawings.

  

Partnerships

Open archival book with badly worn pages and visible deterioration.

PRONI is a core partner of the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland (VRTI) and has been a recipient of project funding to conserve the earlier registers of the Archbishops of Armagh. These medieval manuscripts provide a unique and vivid perspective of life in Ireland in the 14th - 16th centuries but were severely damaged by mould causing the paper to soften and crumble. This made the registers inaccessible despite being a rich source of documents. 

Open archival book with repaired pages.

Conservation has consolidated the registers of Archbishops Milo Sweteman (1360-80), Nicholas Fleming (1400-1408) and John Swayne (1418-39) and has stabilized the paper, removed acidic 20th century repairs and replaced them with kozo paper repairs. 

As a consequence of conservation, more was discovered about the materiality of Archbishop Swayne’s register, for example, pin-pricks of previous binding structure which have been documented and enhanced our understanding of how the register was formed and used. Detritus which had fallen into the gutter of the pages after the register was bound by Archbishop James Ussher in 1630 such as hairs, quills flowers and sand can be seen as part of this image gallery on the VRTI website. More information about the treatment of Archbishop Swayne’s register can be found on this blog.

Archival book with no binding attached to a large wooden device for treatment.

Archbishop Swayne’s Register is now digitally available on the VRTI website. PRONI’s first Deputy Keeper, D. A. Chart created a translated summary of the register in 1935 which is also part of the VRTI with transitive links to the original manuscript. This makes it possible to search the text in English and then be taken to the corresponding page in the register.

PRONI's Conservation Team have participated in Revealing the Invisible – A Conservation Conversation from the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland with colleagues from The National Archives (UK) and the National Archives of Ireland which can be viewed via this recording. 

A video of the conservation work at PRONI produced by the VRTI can be found on YouTube and can also be viewed below.