sometimes you gotta chase the story down

I have been anxiously awaiting exciting archival news, and none has appeared (at least via my passive methods of collection. I love bloglines). So I went a-huntin' tonight to see what I could find. I tripped onto this interesting post from the University of London's Computer Centre's Digital Archives blog (or ULCC DA blog). Anyway, one of their staff posted about the move to unite the National Library and National Archives in Ireland (see post here) and how completely awful this could be as the Archives will lose its independence.

I found this to be an interesting position as the National Library and Archives here have been put together to make Library and Archives Canada. Now I haven't any idea if there was even minimal uproar over this a few years ago, but after working there over the summer, I don't think the move was a bad one. And I also don't think I met anyone who disagreed with putting the two together either; they were more upset with the move to the middle of nowhere, Gatineau.

So is putting one's national library and archives together a bad decision? We had one woman from Switzerland and another from Tasmania who both came to see how the amalgamation worked. In smaller countries, this may be a viable option as it puts two similar institutions together and might increase budgets and resources (this might be optimistic...). This would never work in the US or Britain as either institution there is LARGE and I would not want to know how large a building would be needed for a combined library and archivesin either place.

I could understand the poster's dismay if the Archives in Ireland was getting absorbed and the archivists were being laid off, leaving librarians in charge. But I was surprised at the overwhelming negative reaction to this.....I'd love to know why the Irish Government is doing it.