TNA Records on CAIN
Background Information

Introduction
Since first being made available on-line in 1997 CAIN (Conflict Archive on the INternet) has sought to provide information and source material on the ‘troubles’ and politics in Northern Ireland from 1968 to the present day.

Associated Site
From the outset CAIN has sought to encourage contributions to the site. CAIN has encouraged and worked with individuals, groups or organizations with relevant information in order to make digital versions of their materials available to a wider audience on-line. A number of contributors, with significant collections of material, were given ‘Associated Site’ status on CAIN.

PRONI Records on CAIN
In 2009 CAIN and the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) agreed to work together to make a selection of material from PRONI’s ‘Annual Release’ scheme available on-line. Of particular interest to CAIN were those items covered under the ‘Annual Release’ scheme which related to the ‘Troubles’ and politics of Northern Ireland post-1968.

National Archives, Ireland - NAI Records on CAIN
The collaboration between CAIN and PRONI attracted the interest of the National Archives, Ireland. In the summer of 2011 CAIN and the National Archives, Ireland agreed to make a selection of files available on CAIN.

TNA Records on CAIN
In addition to the records at PRONI and NAI, there are many British government records held at The National Archives, Kew which relate to the Northern Ireland conflict. CAIN held talks with TNA to see if it would be possible to make digital copies available on the CAIN website. This did not prove possible. However, TNA has released some relevant materials into the public realm. In 2023 CAIN took a decision to catalogue these files and make them searchable via this new section 'TNA Records on CAIN'.

Selection and Preparation of Material
TNA put some files related to Northern Ireland into the public realm as part of New Year releases in 2003 to 2006. CAIN staff visted TNA in 2019(?) to obtain digital copies of relevant files from the period 1965 to 1969. And in 2023, TNA put 64 full files related to Northern Ireland (for the years 1994 and 1997) into the public realm. These three sources formed the basis for the files presented in TNA Records on CAIN.

Identification of Material
From within the files put into the public realm a selection was made of the ones which were considered to be most relevant to complement the existing information on CAIN related to the Northern Ireland conflict. This final selection was made by CAIN staff with reference to sections on CAIN itself – such as Key Events, Key Issues and the CAIN Chronology.

Schedule of Work
A member of the CAIN team, Dr Brendan Lynn, worked on the digital versions of the files during the second half of 2023.

Preparation of Documents
As the documents had already been released by TNA, then obviously CAIN had no control over the process by which the digital images of the pages of the documents were made. We suspect that at least some of the images were made by a digital camera (even possibly the camera on a mobile phone) rather than the preferred method of scanning on a flatbed scanner.

In the case of the 64 full file records, released in 2023, Dr Lynn made a selection of the individual documents withing the files that were of interest to CAIN. He also produced a new PDF version for each individual record, and wrote a catalogue entry for each item (based on a CAIN format). All the files were stored on CAIN and the catalogue entries added to the CAIN Bibliography.