ResearchBuzz

I mentioned this way back in March and now it’s finally arrived! The National Archives of Ireland has released the 1911 census for Dublin, now available at http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/ .

You can search by first/last name, approximate age (within 5 years), gender, and DED (District Electoral Division). I did a search for Smith and got over 2400 results. Results are sorted by surname by default, and are in tables which include name, townland/street, age, sex, and DED. Click on a name and you’ll get the information on the entire family living at that address. On the family page you’ll also find links to census images (which are in PDF format, be warned) that include the basic household form but also forms for buildings, outbuildings, and other forms unique to households or situations.

I am not a big fan of PDF census forms but these were pretty easy to read/magnify/manipulate. Information on these forms included the religion of the family, whether each member could read/write, marital status, where they were born, whether they spoke only “Irish” or both “Irish and English” and any conditions that the census especially took note of (”idiot”, “lunatic”, etc.)

You can also BROWSE the census, which is pretty interesting! You can browse by DED, which will take you through the townlands/streets of Dublin and list houses and families as well as significant buildings in the area. To get a sense of what the city was like in 1911, the site also has several articles and photographs covering a variety of topics including religion, transportation, poverty, and law.

Be sure to check out the future plans page, which shows the order in which census records will be made available. 1911 will be done first, then 1901. Something to look forward to!

The Irish Times has announced a full online archive, covering 1859 up to the present day. The official launch hasn’t been announced yet but you can still start browsing the archives now.

The archive starts at http://www.ireland.com/search/ . Note that there are two archives — a text archive and a digital archive. You want the digital archive - the text one only goes back to 1996. New editions are added to the archives a week after publication.

For searching you can do a full search, the past 30 days, the past year, or a date search. Search is simple keyword. A search for revolution found over 54,800 results, with an option to refine by date (and a very nifty graph that shows you the number of results over time and allows you to click-n-drag to narrow your date range.) Oldest articles are listed first.

Search results show the date of the search and the headline of the article with your keyword. Sometimes this is useful and sometimes the headline is generic like “Latest News”. The headline is an image from the digitized edition.

Alas, that’s all you’re going to get for free. If you want to see the entire article, you’ll have to pay. Access for the archive starts at €10 for a 24-hour pass and goes all the way to €395 for a whole year’s worth of access. You also have the option to buy a high-quality reproduction of a single page; I didn’t see any prices for that. Instead, you fill out a form for someone to contact you.

Doing a little keyword searching, I found the surname of one of my Irish ggg-grandparents mentioned several times. I might have to shell out some money… plenty to see here!