Irish History Online

Irish History Online project history

Irish History Online was established in 2003 following a successful application for funding from the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences by a team consisting of Professor Jacqueline Hill (NUI Maynooth), Dr Bernadette Cunningham (RIA library), Professor Mary O'Dowd (Queen's University, Belfast), and Dr Ian Archer (Keble College, Oxford). Under the IRCHSS Government of Ireland Project Grants Scheme, funding was for three years (2003-6), the purpose being to make available a fully searchable online database of Writings on Irish History, originally published in Irish Historical Studies, later on microfiche, and subsequently in booklet form. The project has been conducted in conjunction with the Royal Historical Society Bibliography, and uses the same software. In view of this, and following agreement with the RHS Bibliography, Irish History Online has assumed responsibility for recording items relating to the history of Ireland published from 2003 onwards.

Writings on Irish History, 1936 -

From its inception, the journal Irish Historical Studies offered readers an annual listing of 'Writings on Irish History', covering the period 1936-78. By 1979 the sheer volume of publications suggested a change of format, and Writings on Irish History 1979-83 were published in microfiche by the Irish Committee for Historical Sciences (ICHS) (now the Academy Committee for Historical Sciences, under the aegis of the Royal Irish Academy). From 1984, Writings on Irish History, published by the ICHS (later, in association with A New History of Ireland and Irish Historical Studies) appeared as a separate publication, edited first by Jacqueline Hill (1984), then by Clara Cullen (1985-7), and subsequently by Sarah Ward-Perkins (1988-94). Writings on Irish History 1995-6, also edited by Sarah Ward-Perkins, was published in electronic format as a pilot scheme for the present project, into which it has now been incorporated. Since 1984 the principal compilers of Writings have been Clara Cullen (UCD) and Monica Henchy (TCD), giving way in the 1990s to the present compilers, Máirín Cassidy (UCD library) and Ciaran Nicholson (TCD library).

NUI Maynooth

From 2003 to 2009 the Irish History Online project was located in the Department of History, NUI Maynooth, where work began in September 2003 under a bibliographic editor (Dr Anthony McCormack) and a data inputter (Ms Mary Murray) to enter data from Writings on Irish History. The first phase of Irish History Online was completed in September 2006, and the entire corpus of data from Writings on Irish History from 1936 to 2001 went live in October 2006, comprising some 58,000 records.

A second three-year phase of funding was awarded under the IRCHSS Government of Ireland Project Grants Scheme, to run from 2006 to 2009. Phase 2 of Irish History Online had two main aims: to improve coverage of more recent titles, and to enhance coverage of the Irish abroad and works on Irish history published abroad. A new bibliographic editor, Dr Frank Cullen, conducted this phase of the project. He was advised by a team of Investigators comprising Professor Jacqueline Hill (NUI Maynooth); Dr Patrick Fitzgerald (Centre for Migration Studies, Omagh, County Tyrone); Professor Kerby Miller (University of Missouri-Columbia); Professor Peter Solar (Vesalius College, Vrije Universiteit Brussel), Dr Thomas O'Connor (Irish in Europe Project, NUI Maynooth), and Dr Ian Archer (Keble College, Oxford). The IHO management committee for phase two comprised J. Hill (NUIM), B. Cunningham (RIA), C. Nicholson (TCD) and M. Cassidy (UCD).

In January 2010, Irish History Online was transferred to the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, where it will be maintained and updated by a small team of voluntary editors and compilers comprising Mairín Cassidy (formerly UCD Library), Ciaran Nicholson (TCD Library), and Bernadette Cunningham (RIA Library), with the assistance of the Academy’s IT Department and the Academy Library.

Irish History Online offers a much more comprehensive guide to publications on all aspects of the history of Ireland since the 1930s than has ever been made available in any other bibliographic resource. It is free to users.