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Thursday, August 23, 2007

New site for PRONI and an extra £8million..

When the then-Minister for Culture, Arts and Leisure, Maria Eagle MP, announced in October 2006 that the Department was advertising “for expressions of interest from developers to provide a site, and building for the new offices” of the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland [and their 54 km of records - Ed], I noted it and suggested that the investment be used to expand their online archive. Today the now-Minister Edwin Poots announced the site for the new office - the Titanic Quarter [btw archiseek has some images of the proposed Titanic Development].  Interestingly though, and unexplained by today’s statement, is that the cost of the project appears to have risen, since October 2006, from £22million to £30million..

Pete Baker @ 03:02 PM

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  1. Sheesh, I do wish you wouldn’t do that, Pete. I misread it as “New site for PRON” and was already salaciously licking my lips in anticipation :0)

    Posted by  on Aug 23, 2007 @ 07:20 PM

  2. completely agreed with you Pete. We are in the computer age, the money should have be used to further digitize the records. The facility on Balmoral is more than adequate for storage and the real public benefit would have been from their entire collection online and accessible from anywhere.

    Posted by  on Aug 23, 2007 @ 11:52 PM

  3. Er, but there would be fewer geneological tours to belfast then.  Better build huge reading rooms for all the mouldy paper stuff.  The Starbucks franchise would go for a few bob.

    Posted by  on Aug 24, 2007 @ 08:02 AM

  4. Interesting that yesterday’s A’Town News had a report which stated the new location would be in west Belfast. It was complete with extensive quotes from a ‘senior PRONI source.’

    http://editions.pagesuite.co.uk//Openpagesuite.aspx?pubid=1803&pubname=Andersonstown News Thursday

    thats also a pretty cool online way to read the paper.

    Posted by  on Aug 24, 2007 @ 01:18 PM

  5. Brendan,

    Thanks for the heads-up on PageSuite!

    Posted by  on Aug 24, 2007 @ 01:26 PM

  6. “Better build huge reading rooms for all the mouldy paper stuff.”

    We’ll just have to agree to disagree on that, aquifer.

    Back to the original post though..

    I’ve yet to see any attempt at an explanation for the extra cost since the £22million for the project was announced in October 2006 - not to mention why that expenditure appears to have been nodded through.

    Posted by  on Aug 24, 2007 @ 06:08 PM
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New site for PRONI and an extra £8million.. (6)

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