New Collection in DRI – Carysfort College Registers, 1883-1922

The collection contains three volumes of hand written entries, which record the details of students registered with the Carysfort Training College, offering vital information such as full names of candidates, their age, school – and the parish and diocese of the student.

This exciting new collection has been ingested into the Repository as a result of partnership between UCD School of Education, the Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy, and UCD Library. The collection was kindly funded by the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) through the Kevin B. Nowlan Digitisation Grant and UCD Decades of Centenaries, and is permanently preserved and available online in the DRI Repository, and at UCD Digital Library. 

DRI Interim Director, Dr Lisa Griffith said:

“We are thrilled to add the Carysfort College Registers 1883-1922 collection to the DRI Repository. This meticulous collection sheds light on the enduring presence of and contribution made by women to education throughout the past two centuries of Irish history. The collection also usefully provides materials that will assist with applying a gendered lens to assessing women’s contribution to the workforce across the island of Ireland.The collaborations involved in bringing this project to fruition serve to heighten the importance of the collection, and we are delighted to digitally preserve these precious materials for the long-term in the Repository.”

The registers will also be of significance to those interested in genealogy and the social history of Ireland, as well as the history of education and teacher training across the island. UCD are delighted to announce that this collection will also make up a Google Arts and Culture online exhibit where individual women who passed through the Carysfort Training College will be profiled, as well as their connections to the wider political, social and cultural scenes of their era.

On publishing the collection, UCD Digital Library Manager Audrey Drohan said:

“The UCD Digital Library team are very privileged to have worked with Marianne Cosgrave, archivist for the Mercy Congregational Archives, and Professor Deirdre Raftery and Dr Catriona Delaney from the UCD School of Education, on this collection. We would also like to thank our colleagues in the DRI and the RIA for their support throughout the project. We hope the users enjoy browsing the registers and learning about the women who went on to shape the minds of the children in Ireland in the early 20th century.”

The Carysfort College Registers, 1883-1922 can be viewed and downloaded in the DRI Repository.

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