Military Archives (Ireland)

The mission of the Military Archives is to acquire, preserve and make available to the public the documentary heritage of the Defence Forces and the Department of Defence. As such, the Military Archives is the place of deposit for the archives of the Defence Forces, the Department of Defence and the Army Pensions Board, under the terms of the National Archives Act, 1986. Archives are records with a special significance, records that are deemed to be of enduring value, for a variety of reasons. The term record includes paper documents such as 'one off' files, letters and memoranda, as well as pictorial records such as photographs and film. This is unlike the material held in a typical library, which is almost always printed or published material that has been widely disseminated in bound volume (book) format. Archives are therefore absolutely unique and irreplaceable: once lost they can never be recovered. Increasingly, archives today are also acquired in electronic format - whether sound, image or text digital files