Two trainee archivists from the Ecole des Chartes in Paris are based in Dublin City Archives on work-experience for the month of September. Jean-Charles Bedauge and Alice Mott are specializing in palaeography and late Latin and are working with medieval manuscripts while they are with us.

Autumn activities at Dublin City Library & Archive include participation in Culture Night on Friday 14 September, when the building will be open until 22.00; and in Open House Dublin, run by the Architecture Foundation, when we will be open on Saturday 20 October until 19.00, offering behind-the-scenes guided tours of the building.

Dublin City Library & Archive will host the NUI Maynooth Certificate in Local History, which will be taught by Dr Seamas O Maitiu. Thirty-two students have registered for the course, which will run from September 2007 until April 2008.

The popular City Hall Lunch-time Lectures return every Tuesday in October, on the theme ‘Jim Larkin and the Belfast Dock Strike 1907’. This has been organized in association with SIPTU and speakers include John Gray, of the Linen Hall Library Belfast; Professor Henry Patterson, University of Ulster; Hugh Forrester, Curator of the Police Museum in Belfast; and Theresa Moriarty and Francis Devine, of the Irish Labour History Society.

In what has become an annual event, on Saturday 10 November, the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Councillor Paddy Bourke, will formally receive this year’s deposit of First World War archives from the Royal Dublin Fusiliers Association.

Finally, Sheila Carden’s biography of Tom Kelly, The Alderman, will be published by Dublin City Council at the end of November. Kelly was a significant and influential figure on Dublin City Council during the first four decades of the 20th century, making important contributions to the development of social housing, the library service and the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art. The biography is based on family papers along with the holdings of Dublin City Archives.