The archives of Glenstal Abbey are, like any other Catholic Church archives, private. Access to them is at the discretion of the professional archivist and the Abbot, and only for bona fide researchers.
In addition to this, the monastery is subject to two types of laws, civil law and canon law. According to the latter, strictly-speaking no material less than 100 years should be made public. This would put almost all material in the archive outside of reach.
General Data Protection regulation also requires that any data relating to living persons be kept confidential. See relevant legislation for more details.
Aware however, of the valuable place which the monastery has in local, national, international and Church history, we will do our best to contribute to this within the aforementioned limitations.
We are engaging in the slow process of cataloguing and digitising parts of the collection to make them accessible online.
For in-person information requests, we ask that notice be given either in writing or telephone. This is to facilitate the timely preparation of the material, and to assess whether it can legally be viewed. This applies to those internal to our organisation as well as external.