Archive snapshot of social change in 40 years

As he officially donated his sizeable personal archive to the National Library yesterday, Senator David Norris had a confession to make.

"I feel like an utter fraud," he said, as he looked around at a library which includes the personal records of luminaries such as WB Yeats and James Joyce.

"My archive includes almost 100 boxes of old scraps of notes, copies of meetings, invitation to social events. If you're close to them, they really don't look that important. But if they want them, and they feel they are in the public interest, they're very welcome to have them."

While he might be too modest to admit it, Sen Norris's records are an intriguing snapshot of rapid social change in Ireland over the last 40 years.

As well as documenting the emergence of the gay rights movement and the wider civil rights campaigns, the archive also includes material on his crusade to rescue historic buildings in Dublin from the grip of property developers and popularise the works of James Joyce.

Of all the information he donated, he suspects that records relating to the gay rights movement will prove of most interest. "I started collecting newspaper articles on gay rights on a day-by-day basis in the 1960s. They show the word 'gay' appeared with great resistance initially, either in quotes or with a question mark. These articles show it gradually becoming part of the vernacular.

"I hate the sense of losing our history, and gay people have lost so much because it was either written out or people denied they were gay or weren't allowed to be gay. So this will be part of making that available. It's another part of the spectrum of Irish life."

Former president Mary Robinson, who launched the collection and acted for Sen Norris in his case to have the law against homosexual acts struck down, paid tribute to his courage in campaigning for gay rights.

"I remember at the time he gave me a handwritten note about his experiences of being gay and it reduced me to tears... It brought home to me for the first time the extent of the pain of being aware in his adolescent years that he was gay in a society that was very judgmental and very cruel."

The National Library approached Sen Norris some time ago and offered to purchase the collection, although the Joycean scholar says he decided to provide it for free.

Meanwhile, the self-confessed fanatical record-keeper warned the National Library that his archive may continue to grow over the coming years.