Introduction
The Directory of Irish Genealogy was published in conventional printed form between 1990 and 1994, and has appeared on the Internet since 1998, this being the 2008 Edition. Again there is a mix of useful information, guidance and links, accompanied by statements of opinion on areas of concern in the realm of Irish genealogy. Contact details of most of the repositories and organisations mentioned below may be found in our Links section. All opinions expressed are of course those of the author alone, and where factual errors can be demonstrated they will be corrected.
Starting as usual with the National Library of Ireland, the most positive development continues to be the Genealogy Room, now run by Library staff as opposed to contracted professional genealogists. A range of reference aids can be viewed here, including websites such as Irish Origins and the Irish Times archive. Apparently because of problems over reproduction rights to Catholic parish registers in particular, the Library maintains two microfilm rooms, one for newspapers where self-service copying is permitted, and the other for parish registers and other material where copying other than manual transcription is not permitted. The Library decided in May 2008 to permit access to the formerly closed microfilmed parish registers of the Archdiocese of Cashel and Emly, and it remains to be seen how the Archbishop will react, and how the renewed controversy will affect progress to the next necessary step of digitising registers. The present writer frankly wonders if it was wise to stir up a hornet's nest by restoring access to Cashel and Emly registers just one month after the Vatican unfortunately issued a warning against allowing Mormons access to church records.
The Library's decisive action in relation to church registers stands in contrast to its failure to deal with the remarkable 'shambles' of the heraldic service operated by the Office of the Chief Herald. It is now conceded that all Irish arms grants from 1943 to 2003 were made without proper legal authority, and the claim that grants from 2005 onwards are valid continues to be questioned. The arms problem was only discovered as a result of the Office of the Chief Herald's entanglement in the Mac Carthy Mór scandal, and the appointment as Chief Herald in 2005 of one of the signatories of the Belfast hoaxer Terence MacCarthy's certificate of chiefship hardly augured well for its resolution. While I have been accused of being a liar and worse, the Library management must now be well aware of the truth of my repeated assertions that the archive of the Office of the Chief Herald contains a significant number of corrupt documents encompassing invented pedigrees, spurious arms and bogus titles, but most of these have been allowed to stand in the record.
In the National Archives of Ireland self-service access to microfilms and on the spot copying continue to be among the most successful of changes in recent years. Behind the scenes however there are severe problems in the Archives in terms of resources and storage facilities. Unlike the National Library, which has fitted out an open access genealogical reference and advice area managed by its own staff, the Archives continues to rely on contracted professional genealogists to provide advice to users. While generally a very useful research tool, there are some problems with the National Archives 1911 Census digitisation project, which prior consultation with knowledgeable genealogists and database experts could have avoided. In its third year the project has delivered only one completed county, Dublin, and while other counties will probably come on stream this year, the project is proceeding at a purgatorially slow pace. The project is also very expensive, being allocated €1 million of government funding this year, and as the public finances are overstretched in more important areas such as health and education, it is not clear how long such support can be maintained.
Accurate and comprehensive searchability of the online database is another problem. Thus the 1911 Census form for the family of the revolutionary James Connolly is featured on the National Archives website as an example, yet it cannot be located by a search under that name, being eventually located under the spelling 'Connelly', clearly a transcription error. A Rafter family known to have lived in James's Street in Usher's Quay Ward was eventually located under the misspelling 'Raster', while the street itself could only be accessed under the form 'James's St.', the spelling 'James's Street' returning only the street of the name in South Docks Ward. These errors have been communicated to the National Archives and presumably will be rectified, but of course they will not be the only mistakes of their kind. Was the census indexing work carried out in Ireland or by the National Archives's project partner Library and Archives Canada, and what if any training in Irish surname forms was given to the indexers? Established commercial websites such as those of Ancestry and Origins provide a soundex or variant name search facility, and it is surprising that this was not included by the National Archives. I hold no particular brief for the commercial firm Origins and their Irish partner Eneclann, but consider it remarkable that having successfully delivered online Griffith's Valuation and an index to a portion of wills in the National Archives, they are not involved in the digitisation of Irish census records.
While the General Register Office research facility has moved to more spacious premises in the Irish Life Centre, Dublin, searches still have to be conducted slowly and expensively in printed indexes, and there is no sign of the completion of the multimillion-Euro vital record digitisation programme, which it is feared has run into similar difficulties as the now suspended British digitisation of vital records project. The Irish Family History Foundation is proceeding with an online research service, which delivers only indexed data and no copies of original records, which is at variance with standard practice of most online commercial research agencies internationally. At €5 per piece of information, generously reduced from €10, the service is prohibitively expensive and poor value for money. As reported here before, the Comptroller and Auditor General criticised the project in terms of management and value for public funds invested.
Should access to genealogical records always be free, even when placed online via the Internet? In an ideal world the answer would be yes. It is true that some records are being made freely available online, most recently Griffith's Valuation under the aegis of the Library Council of Ireland. However, as the public finances continue to deteriorate in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland it is not clear that funds for such projects will continue to be available. An Irish Times editorial of 26 July 2008, entitled 'Tracing ancestors', lauded the Library Council's inititative, noting that Griffith's Valuation was previously 'only available online for payment', a reference to the established service of Irish Origins, which on a point of accuracy was and still is freely available to users of the National Library. I must admit that I was puzzled that the Library Council would duplicate work already done, instead of choosing some of the many records not yet indexed or digitised, and am frankly appalled that each page of Griffith presented online is defaced with a copyright notice (any commercial service doing this would rightly be condemned). As for the Irish Times, whose own invaluable archive goes back to 1859, is this made available to the public entirely free of charge? Not at all, advertisements in the paper advise that a 24 hour subscription to the online newspaper archive costs €10, and the cost of yearly access is a whopping €395.
However, the Irish Times online archive, which received a government subsidy, is freely available on the premises of public libraries around the country. This suggests a good model for access to online genealogical information: commercial firms should be able to index and digitise public records and sell access to those who wish speedy and convenient access, but government and local authorities should ensure that the online records can be accessed without charge through public research facilties. In many if not most cases, the commercial firms can be persuaded to provide such controlled free access as a quid pro quo for being permitted to exploit public records, the copyright in which incidentally should never be allowed to be privatised. Finally, I might recall that the introduction to the first online edition of this Directory in 1998 referred to those complaining that computerisation of records was 'taking the joy out of genealogical research'. These Luddite but well placed elements are now more circumspect in the expression of their views, but they have not entirely abandoned them, and their past campaigns have been a leading cause of the backward and confused state of genealogical record digitisation in Ireland when measured against progress internationally.Sean Murphy
Centre for Irish Genealogical and Historical Studies
Last updated 29 August 2008