Eoin McKiernan Library

EML Director Update, December 2022

The McKiernan Library had a very productive few months this fall! We completed our year-long project on the Twin City Irish American Club by publishing new work on this fascinating local history. Our local history work was featured at CJAC’s annual Fall Fundraiser event where I had the opportunity to chat on stage with Irish archivist and musician Niamh Ní Charra about intersections between archives and music-making. We increased the capacity of our facility thanks to an office remodel and new financial support for our physical archives. We also added new books to our collection and promoted our childrens’ books with some book review videos by a young reader.

Our collection and reading room were used more than ever this season. I spoke to a class from Breck School about genealogy research and did reference sessions with several young researchers. The number of visitors during our Monday and Thursday open hours grew as well.

Twin City Irish American Club: Article and Video

Tom and Mike Malone. Courtesy Mark Malone.

After months of research, photo collecting, interviews and writing, my lengthy, in-depth article on the Twin City Irish American Club was published in Issue 20 of Celtic Junction Arts Center’s Arts Review. The club’s story sheds much light on the experience of post-World War II Irish immigrants in Minnesota. It also gets at the Irish-American experience and how that changed from the Korean War years through the Kennedy administration and on into the 1970s. Thanks to the generous help of many community members, we were able to share the individual stories of several Irish-Minnesotans. For a quick visual summary of this project, please watch Twin City Irish American Club Exhibition Video on our YouTube chanel.


McKiernan Library at CJAC’s Fall Fundraiser

CJAC 2022 Fall Fundraiser

Musician and archivist Niamh Ní Charra was our guest for CJAC’s 2022 Fall Fundraiser and it was a treat to chat with her on stage about archives and music. Niamh, from Killarney, County Kerry, spoke about her album Cuz which was based on a tape given her by Kerry-born accordion player Terry “Cuz” Teahan. We spoke about how important sound recordings and archival collections are to musicians who love traditional Irish music. The next day, Niamh gave a talk on her work as archivist for the University of Galway’s Conradh na Gaeilge and Mary Robinson collections.


New Office, Media Room and Archival Supplies

Library Office with archival materials waiting for their new boxes!

The renovation of the McKiernan Library office wrapped up in October. The result was a beautiful new office/archives room with plenty of space for our small (but growing) physical archival collection, my desk, our large format scanner and a work table. We also separated out a corner of the space to be used as our new Media Room. We’re still working on sourcing a computer and other tech to make this room a functional place to watch a DVD, listen (and even play along) to music or to do basic one-person recordings.

This fall we also received a generous donation from Fergus and Ann McKiernan to purchase proper archival folders, boxes, cases and other supplies to properly house our physical archival collection relating to Dr. Eoin McKiernan. Our Eoin McKiernan Collection includes letters, photos, newspaper clippings, pamphlets, posters and other ephemera collected by Dr. McKiernan during his time with the Irish American Cultural Institute and Irish Books and Media as well as items relating to his work at St. Thomas University and as an international promoter of Irish studies and Irish culture generally. We look forward to properly housing these materials and creating a finding aid on our website to help researchers access what is there.


New Graphic Novels and “Henry’s Books”

Celtic Junction Arts Center funded the purchase of about a dozen new books for the library this fall and, thanks to some book donations that came in over the past year, we added an additional 200 books to our shelves and searchable online catalog. Some of the book purchases were kids books aimed at some of the young readers (many of them students at O’Shea Irish Dance or Center for Irish Music) that visit our reading room during our weeknight open hours. My own son Henry is an avid reader and he agreed to do some video reviews of some of our books. We had a lot of fun making the first three episodes of Henry’s Books!


Remembering Martin McHugh

Martin McHugh. Photo by Nick Lethert.

One benefit of the local history work done by the McKiernan Library is that, in times of loss, our collections have the potential to help our community remember cherished friends, loved ones and role models. This was the case with the passing of accordion player and Irish music champion Martin McHugh this October. As we grieved with the Twin Cities community, we were thankful for the photos and stories we were able to share including some that appear here with McHugh’s obituary written by Sam Dillon.