Also: 'Showing Northern Ireland how it's done'. (Same article as above ? by same journalist - but in unidentified newspaper

Logistics of the Briefing:

Description of Briefing

Further logistics

List of participants - Speaker list

While the Brian Currin Collection is a private collection, the records do give substantial insight into the professional life of the donor. As a private collection it is incomplete in the sense that a number of items that were regarded as being too personal for the public domain were removed from the Collection. Some items were faxed transmissions and had faded to the point of being illegible.

These documents were disposed of, while those that had maintained a certain degree of legibility have been photocopied and form part of the collection. This was done in collaboration with Currin himself.

The processor of this Collection was given several lever arch files of documents. After a number of bouts of sorting, the records were divided into three discrete groups:

Personal letters, which provide insight into personal and working relationships with individuals and organisations

Diary files that covers events over a period of 7 years, from 1987 to 1993

Subject files including topics such as: Political prisoners and Indemnity

The records are paper-based records and comprise correspondence, diary entries, invitations to events, programmes of conferences and the like, newspaper clippings and cards. However, an audio cassette entitled: 'Diakonia Breakfast Briefing 4/8/94. Brian Currin on the Truth Commission,' forms part of an otherwise entirely paper-based collection. [Ethel appears to have misplaces this cassette as it is not in the boxes.]

As the largest part of the collection comprises 'diary files' consisting of multiple types of documents - traditional diary entries, letters, newspaper articles, drafts of addresses and press statements - the methodology employed was to arrange and classify the records/records accumulations strictly chronologically - but taking into account how the donor had arranged his documents in the lever arch files.

Some records are not dated. These have been identified as such and have been arranged in the order and as part of the fonds which Currin himself had created when compiling his diary. This methodology applies to the letters as well. (In some instances Currin placed newspaper articles in his 'Letters' lever arch file).

In cases where it might be reasonably presumed that a record had been erroneously dated, this circumstance was indicated as such. In some cases the archivist undertook research to establish when certain undated records may have been created in that particular form. In these instances errors may have crept in.