‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’: using an estate collection to develop an online presence

The papers of the Armstrong family of Moyaliffe Castle, County Tipperary, held at the Glucksman Library, University of Limerick in Ireland, contain a unique set of diaries, photographs, correspondence, and ephemera relating to the First World War. The centenary commemorations of 2014–2018 inspired the Library to embark on an ambitious undertaking to showcase the broad range of this material to highlight how archival collections can be used to bring history to life. The project took the form of an online exhibition, which followed the daily lives of the Armstrong family through weekly blog posts published in ‘real time’ between June 2014 and December 2018. The project represented the first major attempt of the Library’s Special Collections and Archives Department at using its collections to develop an online presence. This paper explains how the project came about, and explores in some detail the work involved in its creation, the difficulties faced by the small project team which managed it, and lessons learnt along the way.