Fantastic Find! Beyond 2022: Ireland’s Virtual Record Treasury

The fire that destroyed the Public Records Office in Dublin in June of 1922 with the resulting loss of centuries of Irish records has made researching our Irish ancestors difficult.

[Source: Trinity College, Dublin]

But now, five institutions* have joined together to search out duplicates of the original records in other collections to"recreate virtually as much of the archive as possible in a digital format that can be accessible to everybody" in time for the centenary of the fire.**

The project is called Beyond 2022: Ireland’s Virtual Record Treasury and its director Peter Crooks*** explains:

“We are committed to producing 50 million words of searchable material by 2022 and that is possible with the artificial intelligence we are using,” he said. 

“Tens of thousands of papers will be digitised, but they will also be searchable, which is a change. We will be able to mine this information for individual names.”

I strongly suggest you visit Trinity College Dublin's website about the project, especially the Gallery which has a number of images and videos, including a 1922 newsreel that shows the Public Records Office on fire.

I learned about Beyond 2022 through a link to the this article in the Irish Times.

*They are: the National Archives, the UK national archives, the public records office in Northern Ireland, the Irish Manuscripts Collection and the library at Trinity College Dublin (TCD).
**Which happened on June 30, 1922, two days after the start of the Irish Civil War.
**You can watch a video with Peter Crooks here.

© 2019 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Fantastic Find: John Grenham - Irish Roots

Mr. Grenham's website is a great resource for those of you researching your Irish ancestors. Check out his blog Irish Roots. For instance, his most recent post (dated 24 April 2017) is titled "We have grave concerns..." and it's chock full of links to an impressive number of sources for Irish cemetery records.

The post begins:

I was once told by an American psychotherapist that the Irish have serious problems with bereavement. Apparently we find it very hard to let go. Maybe that’s the reason we have such a thing about graveyards. Because we certainly do have a thing about graveyards.

[City cemetery, Belfast, Ireland, October 1918. American National Red Cross Collection in the 

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.]

You can read a short biography of John Grenham at Legacy Family Tree's website but, sadly, you've a month late to hear his webinar "Why are Irish records so weird?" for free.


© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.