‘Champion opens a window into family life

AN intriguing project, based on information gleaned from the pages of The Clare Champion, will look at life and death in County Clare in the early part of the 20th century.

The Biographical Index of The Clare Champion 1903-1934 project is a collaboration between the Clare Roots Society and Clare County Library.

Clare Roots Society is looking for volunteers to assist in the collection and recording of biographical notices published in The Champion for the years 1903 to 1934. This information will create a searchable index to be made available on the Clare Library website for public access when completed.

A similar project was undertaken some years ago for Clare Champion issues published for years 1935 to 1985 and the index is available online. The project will complete the index for all Clare Champion publication years, 1903-1985.

The editions of the newspaper can be on microfilm spool, microfiche and hardcopy, located in the Local Studies Centre, Ennis, where the review and recording will take place. Alternatively, volunteers living in the Dublin area could use the National Library of Ireland to access their archive of Clare Champion publications.

Volunteers may have events in their family history of special interest relating to specific calendar years and, where possible, these calendar years will be assigned to them on a ‘first request’ basis. Transcriptions can be carried out at a time suitable for the volunteer.

Volunteers will review the newspapers for the following categories of biographical information: births, marriage, death, engagement, ordination and obituary.

The information collected will be entered into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, provided by the project co-ordinator. However, a lack of computer skills should not preclude anyone from volunteering. Collecting the information and submitting handwritten lists will be of considerable benefit to the project team. A briefing session will be provided for those who are new to handling hardcopy archives, to ensure protection of the paper copies.

For more details, contact Larry Parks on 087 2464386, email cloudnet@iol.ie or Eric Shaw on 087 9791955, email cartock@gmail.com.