National Library of Ireland Databases

Have you visited the National Library of Ireland’s website recently? They have a lot of information available on their website to help the family historian.

The first is their page on doing family history research at the National Library of Ireland. Here you can download a PDF file to help you get started. The file is two pages and gives brief descriptions of civil, church, census and land and property records. There is a list of useful addresses to further your research.

On this page you will find a link to a description of the Genealogy Advisory Service which is free to all those who go to the library.

There is a searchable online catalogue and if you are lucky you may find some digitzed items in the results. You can narrow your search to just digitized items but you may miss out on something important.

Sources Database is the online version of Hayes Manuscript. I discussed this database in a blog posting entitled “Hayes Manuscript now Online at the National Library of Ireland.”

The Newspaper Database is a searchable database to find newspapers available at the library by either publication name or by publication town/city or county. You can chose to include titles from the Newsplan Project which are not held by the National Library of Ireland.

Manuscript Collection Lists provides a detailed listing for the contents of the manuscript collections. You can search by the following categories: business, cartographic, estate, family, Gaelic, literary, military, personal and political. You can browse the records by these categories as well.

Photographic Databases include: The Lawrence Collection, The Clonbrock Collection, The O’Dea Collection and The Poole Collection. This past St. Patrick’s Day Ancestry announced that they had the Lawrence Collection. You can view it for free here. Searches can be done by county, description keyword and location keyword.

The Clonbrock Collection can be searched by title, subject and year. The O’Dea Collection can be searched by county, location, description, date and subject. The Poole Collection can be searched by subject and year. There are some more specific search criteria but these will be the ones used by most family historians.

The Digital Photographs Database has eight collections: Clarke Collection; Eason Collection; Independent H Collection; Lawrence Royal & Cabinet Collections; Keogh Collection; Poole Whole Plate Collection; Stereo Pair Collection and the Tempest Collection.

I found the Stereo Pair Collection fun to go through. They were meant to be viewed in a stereoscope where you would get a 3D image of the photograph. The years covered are 1860-1890.

There was one of the Little Sugar Loaf in Wicklow that brought back memories. We used to climb the Little and Great Sugar Loaf mountains and have a picnic near the top. They were called Sugar Loaf because they looked like a loaf of sugar. You used to get sugar in a conical shape and shave off the amount you needed. You have the ability to order a digital copy of the images.

Why not go in and have a little fun at the National Library of Ireland today. You do not have to travel to Ireland to do it!

©2011 – Blair Archival Research

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