Jesuit archives outreach

To mark this year's Archives Awareness Campaign, Irish Jesuit archivist, Damien Burke, has created a set of historical photos from Jesuit schools concerning sports, including this photo of an Irish Jesuit, Fr Joe Conway, teaching Zambian students how to play hurling.

This annual consciousness-raising campaign is an initiative of The Archives and Records Association in the UK and Ireland runs an annual Archives Awareness campaign, and we're currently in the middle of it. Fittingly, the theme this year is 'Sports, games and the Olympics'. Damien is a committee-member of the Irish branch of the ARA.
The full set of photos relating to Jesuit schools and sports can be seen here. It is one of many photo sets that Damien has presented on the Irish Jesuit Flickr pages. All of the archive collections can be accessed from here.
Over the past few years Damien has worked hard to expand the profile of the Irish Jesuit Archives. They are an invaluable resource both for people interested in Jesuit history and for those investigating Irish social and cultural history in the last two centuries. Damien has been quick to engage social media. Apart from maintaining the Flickr collections, he regularly posts on an exhibition blog at Tumblr. And to help people who want to keep up with archive activities as they unfold, he also tweets each new development.

How times have changed. Even though archivists might still spend much of their time surrounded by dusty tomes and ageing documents, when it comes to 'outreach' they are fully plugged in to the electronic age.