Digital reconstitution of the Public Record

pedroeibar1

A piece on RTE this morning announcing the ‘reconstitution digitally’ of what was in the Record office in 1922. It was disappointingly brief & hurried, particularly as a TCD prof had taken the trouble to come into the studio. It was unclear as to what will be available from overseas repositories.

Gist of it is that TCD with the NAI, the Manuscripts Commission and others are in the process of rebuilding a digital version of the archive destroyed in 1922 and have set the centenary year as a deadline. This page has info and on it are links to what is being done and what will be available.

Del.Monte

Can you summarise that ^^^^^ ? RTE's nonsense report was suggesting that miraculously all the destroyed records were going to reappear in this virtual archive. They can't even fix the 1901/1911 census archives and now this nonsense.

pedroeibar1

Sean O’Rourke had no idea.
In brief it appears to be the Chancery Rolls – documents given under seal in Ireland and England. They are transcripts of letters, (patents and pleas) mostly written in Latin, issued in the king’s name.
So there is no hope of getting a view of gggrandfather’s will, or the more arcane family/genealogical records that so many of us miss. Those records are gone forever.

pinkypinky

They've launched a slick website now.

I think the project has potential but it can't ever make up for the loss of the censuses.

Brief reminder that there's a petition going to release the 1926 census early.

pedroeibar1

I’ve looked at it more closely and the site is very good once you get used to its quirks. Some of the documents have been translated in full, others have an abbreviated note of content. It’s primarily a resource for historians of the Irish medieval period. It will be great when finished, particularly as I’d assume most undergrads today have no Latin (quid pudor est!). It’s also great to have records together on one site from several repositories and available in scanned image & text formats.

However, for genealogical research on most families it is (and will be) of very limited use because it covers the period 1244–1509. Unless you are sure that your 14th great grandfather was the Baron of wherever or held a State office you’ll not find much on genealogy. Where it is interesting for the non-academic is on local history – searching by placename can throw up some surnames and data so it can be an enjoyable way to pass a bit of time.

dubhthach

pinkypinky wrote: »

They've launched a slick website now.

I think the project has potential but it can't ever make up for the loss of the censuses.

Brief reminder that there's a petition going to release the 1926 census early.

Sure but remember at least four of the census were destroyed prior to 1922 anyways (1861,1871,1881 and 1891).

Given the attitudes of the CSO it'll probably be another 8 years before 1926 is released.

pinkypinky

I know but the older censuses have far more value for genealogical purposes since all bmds began in 1864.

Even if the CSO continues their stance, they need to start working on transforming crates of paper returns into digital content. It took 7 years to get 1901/1911 fully online and they were already microfilmed.