Barbara Durack: Barbara Durack was an RTÉ film and television archivist who became known over a 40-year career for her encyclopaedic knowledge not only of the RTÉ archives, but for her unending knowledge and information on all matters Irish, from history, culture, language and politics to entertainment.
Hugely valued by programme makers, she leaves behind a rich archival legacy covering four decades of Irish broadcasting history within RTÉ. On hearing of her death, she was described by RTÉ director general Cathal Goan as "a national treasure".
Barbara was born and grew up in south Dublin and lived in Dún Laoghaire throughout her life. Her mother, Susan Cunningham, was born in Bray, and her father, Liam Durack, was a native of Lackaghmore, Portroe, Co Tipperary. A shy and private person, from an early age she had an inquiring mind and was interested in everything. To her, "information was oxygen", a phrase she often repeated.
She attended Sion Hill school and then spent a year in Spain and became fluent in Spanish. She was also an accomplished pianist, with a particular love of Mozart. Barbara was hugely enthusiastic about broadcasting and the advent of the Telefiís Éireann service in 1962. That year, she enrolled in a broadcasting course run by the Brendan Smith Academy, under the tuition of Brendan O'Reilly, broadcaster and sportsman, who himself had trained in television in the US. She was recruited to RTÉ in 1963, at the age of 20, along with two other students from the same course: Alan Gibson, now deceased, who became a well-respected RTÉ floor manager, and Charles Byrne, later to become RTÉ head of television facility sales.
Barbara wanted to become a newsreader but her career path took her into a different profession, one she revelled in and with which, in later years, she became synonymous: film and television archives. Her career as film librarian was formalised in 1966 with the foundation of the film library at RTÉ. Working to the chief librarian, Jim McAllister, she was part of a small team of staff responsible for the cataloguing and classification of the film material deposited with the library. Former RTÉ chief librarian from the 1970s Diarmuid Breathnach noted that she had a unique opportunity to grow with the archive as she was there from its foundation.
With the assistance of a specialist film librarian from the UK, a library classification system for film was introduced and Barbara was a willing student. Meticulous in all her work, she was a passionate advocate of the archives and promoted the acquisition and preservation of broadcast material throughout her career.
In later years, as the archive collection grew, promoted it as a precious resource both for broadcasting and for our collective memory.
Barbara's screen credit was seen on numerous RTÉ historical documentaries and programmes over the decades. She was a significant contributor to the major RTÉ/BBC co-production Ireland: A Television History, first broadcast in 1980. In later years, she became a beneficiary of her early film library work in the classification and indexing of RTÉ film and television material as she provided the archival research for programmes such as the seminal history series Seven Ages, as well as making a huge contribution to the long-running popular archive series Reeling in the Years.
Barbara had a love of learning, of words and of language, which made an impression on all those who met or knew her. Her rich use of language and delightful turn of phrase was heard on the Marian Finucane radio show in April 2000, three years before her retirement. She spoke about some of the recent programmes she had worked on, including Seven Ages, and when asked by Marian about whether she relied on her memory or the computer, she replied, "both", remarking that she had been at RTÉ since "God and I were girls."
Following her retirement in 2003, she continued to work in the industry as a film researcher for independent producers, notably Mint Production's documentary series Haughey and Gaelmedia's archive series for TG4 Siar na Seachtóidí and its upcoming follow-on series Siar na hOchtóidí, which will be broadcast later in the autumn.
Steve Carson, producer of Haughey, had high praise for Barbara's work on the series. He described how she was fascinated at researching "historic" events that she had lived through first time around and had viewed as news stories of the day. He recalled how she had the uncanny ability to find and suggest those forgotten pearls in the archive, the countless long-form interviews or overlooked speeches, footage often not broadcast first time around from Ardeiseanna and political events, which told another story.
Her insatiable love of learning also continued after retirement as she undertook a diploma course in local history, folklore and archaeology and with great satisfaction graduated with her diploma earlier in 2006.
Outside of RTÉ she was involved in local history projects and gave generously of her time and knowledge.
Barbara Durack: born October 18th, 1943; died August 20th, 2006.