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Alf MacLochlainn

Irish librarian

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 15, 2026
Entity authorityQ123484874
Source-derived summary

Alf MacLochlainn (30 July 1926 - 8 December 2018) was an Irish librarian and director of the National Library of Ireland.

Alf MacLochlainn was born on 30 July 1926 in Dublin. He graduated from University College Dublin with a Bachelor of Arts degree in French and Irish in 1947. He was appointed a librarian in National Library of Ireland (NLI) in 1949, going on to be appointed the director of the NLI in 1976. He took up the post of university librarian in NUI Galway in 1983 until he retired in 1991. He died on 8 December 2018.

Early life and family

Alfred (Alf) MacLochlainn was born in 1926 in Dublin to Alfred Vincent MacLochlainn, who was a photographer, and Marcella Dowling. Alf MacLochlainn's sister is Charlotte MacLochlainn, author of Letters from Doig: Letters to My Dear Ones in Ireland, 1955 to 1958. She married John Groarke, a teacher and moved to London where she had four sons. The family then emigrated to St Bruno, Quebec in Canada.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Alf MacLochlainn” as irish librarian. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1926, 2018, 1947, 1949—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1926-07-30. The account is most persuasive where MacLochlainn, Irish and librarian can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as irish librarian. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q123484874. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1926, 2018, 1947 and 1949.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Alf MacLochlainn” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.