Identity area
Reference code
AMW-18694
Title
Alen MacWeeney Collection
Date(s)
- 1965 - 1971 (Creation)
Level of description
Collection
Extent and medium
78 audio recordings
Context area
Name of creator
Biographical history
Alen MacWeeney is a Dublin-born photographer. He began his career in Paris at the age of twenty, as Richard Avedon’s assistant. His work has appeared in numerous magazines, including The New Yorker and LIFE magazine and his photographs are in the permanent collections at the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the George Eastman House, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and others. As well as taking photographic portraits of the Irish travelling community he also recorded their music, songs and stories.
Repository
Archival history
Reel-to-reel tapes were loaned to ITMA for copying by Alen McWeeney in 1997. The reel-to-reels were digitised to CD-R at an unknown date, which were transferred to Broadcast WAV files by Memnon Archiving Services, Brussels in 2019
Immediate source of acquisition or transfer
Alen MacWeeney
Content and structure area
Scope and content
This collection focuses primarily on music and song from the Irish Traveller community recorded around County Dublin between 1965 and 1971. Materials in this collection include reel-to-reel tapes, 1 commercial LP, and notes about recordings in two jotter notebooks and loose-leaf paper.
Appraisal, destruction and scheduling
110 reel-to-reel tapes were loaned to ITMA for copying. Only 77 were deemed of relevance to the archive and were accessioned in 1997.
Accruals
The collection was donated in two different accessions, the first in 1998 and the second in 2002. Those accessions contained the following:
6 May 1998: Two 10.5-inch reel-to-reel tapes
25 February 2002: 115 reel-to-reel tapes; 5 10-inch tapes; 3 7-inch tapes; 107 5-inch tapes; two LPs (test pressing The Travelling People of Ireland), two jotters containing tape notes.
System of arrangement
Conditions of access and use area
Conditions governing access
Users may not have access to original recordings, but may access digital surrogate onsite at ITMA, 73 Merrion Square.
Conditions governing reproduction
In copyright
Language of material
- English
- Irish
Script of material
Language and script notes
Physical characteristics and technical requirements
Finding aids
Allied materials area
Existence and location of originals
Existence and location of copies
Related units of description
Notes area
Alternative identifier(s)
Access points
Subject access points
Place access points
Name access points
Genre access points
Description control area
Description identifier
Institution identifier
IE ITMA
Rules and/or conventions used
ISAD(G): General International Standard Archival Description. 2 nd ed. Ottawa: International Council on Archives, 2000.
Irish Guidelines for Archival Description. Ireland: Society of Archivists, 2009
Anglo-American cataloguing rules. 2nd ed., 1988 revision. Ottawa : Chicago: Canadian Library Association.
Irish Guidelines for Archival Description. Ireland: Society of Archivists, 2009
Anglo-American cataloguing rules. 2nd ed., 1988 revision. Ottawa : Chicago: Canadian Library Association.
Status
Level of detail
Partial
Dates of creation revision deletion
Language(s)
- English
Script(s)
Sources
Alen MacWeeney website, 'Bio', https://www.alenmacweeney.com/about/bio (accessed 25 July 2019)
Archivist's note
Collection-level description compiled by Fionnuala Parfrey