Planned Redevelopment of Athy's Shackleton Museum

During the early days of my research into the history of Athy I spent many hours in the main reading room of the National Library in Kildare Street Dublin. This is an impressive horseshoe shaped room with a domed structure almost 50 feet high. During the time I spent there in the 1970s it provided a wonderful setting for my never-ending research into the history of Athy. The National Library is a fantastic resource and its archives provided me with many new insights into the town’s history and shed light on forgotten aspects of its earlier years. I imagine that the numbers of members of the general public who frequent similar research rooms have fallen over the years. In most of our pockets is a smart phone which gives us instant access to data all around the world. Nevertheless the research rooms of national and county libraries still fulfil an important function. They are the access point for knowledge and information which is not necessarily readily available on the internet. Not every document or book is available online and national and local research centres play an important role in preserving our nation’s history. Many years ago on the founding of the Athy Museum Society and with the support of the late Bertie Doyle, Pat Mulhall and many others the Museum Society had planned to establish an Athy town archive which would comprise both the administrative records of Athy Urban District Council, local clubs and the commercial records of local businesses. Unfortunately this proved to be beyond the capabilities of the Museum Society. I was reflecting on this recently when I was depositing with the archive section of the Kildare County Council library some business records and remaining records of Athy’s Workhouse. Although not complete those records constitute an important amount of local historical material that will in time warrant some significant research. Something to consider in tandem with the records of deaths in Athy’s Workhouse recently compiled by Clem Roche and Michael Donovan. The planned redevelopment of the Shackleton Museum in Athy will see the establishment of a research room and reading library. The purpose is to provide an area to facilitate both study and research of all aspects of life and endeavour in the polar regions with particular focus on the Antarctic. Because the Antarctic continent was uninhabited until the establishment of permanent research stations in the early twentieth century, the corpus of Antarctic literature is quite small. That has encouraged the Directors of the Shackleton Museum to proceed with its plan to establish a research library and archive in in the redeveloped museum. These plans have been greatly assisted by the generosity of two Antarctic veterans. Fergus O’Gorman from Dublin who over-wintered in the Antarctica in the late 1950’s with the British Antarctic Survey generously donated hundreds of his polar books to the museum two years ago. Following on from that generous bequest the museum has entered into partnership with the publishers Harvest Press to publish Fergus’s memoirs of his time in the Antarctic and that publication will be launched at the Shackleton Autumn School on the night of October the 28th. Another generous bequest which will add immeasurably to the Museum’s research library and archive came from the U.K based naturalist and writer Robert Burton who sadly passed away at the start of this year. Robert or Bob as we knew him was a regular attendee of the Shackleton Autumn School and was a prolific lecturer to the Autumn School and a contributor of articles to its journal, Nimrod. Bob was an expert on all matters Antarctic and his meticulous research is reflected in the library of books which will find their way to Athy at the end of the Summer. Combined with Fergus O’Gorman’s they will form a body of almost one thousand volumes focused on the Antarctic regions. The museum itself has been assiduous in collecting original archival material that is pertinent to the Antarctic regions and amongst its treasures are diaries belonging to Emily Shackleton, the wife of Ernest Shackleton. The museum remains active in collecting such material and when the archive/library opens for researchers in 2024 there will be a wealth of Antarctic material available, for the first time, to researchers in this country. It is heartening to think that a small town like Athy can become in the near future a destination for researchers and academics from all over the world.