We have started a one month trial of the Irish Newspaper Archives.
username: Nottingham
Password: Nottingham
There are currently 25 titles, with many more scheduled for digitised. The archives of the Independent titles (Ireland’s Leading National Newspaper) run from its inception in 1904-2002; they will be fully up to date by year end.
Many more historically important titles are scheduled for completion by the year end. Next year the Lawerence Collection will be added which consists of 50,000 photographic images from late Victorian Ireland.
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I've been using this database almost everyday since it has been available.
ReplyDeleteIts main advantage is that it supplements the BL 19th century newspaper website by extanding the run of the Freeman's journal back into the early 19th c. and late 18th c.
However, it does have serious drawbacks.
The copy of the Freeman's Journal which has been used for the database occasionally is very poorly printed.
A greater drawback is that the enlargement facility is limited and that the greatest enlargement does not allow some of the early issues of the Freemans Journal to be read comfortably.
Searching: this is the greatest weakness.
The search engine cannot read the images of the newspaper pages very well, and although it brings up some relevant hits, it also finds words that only approximated very vaguely to the original search term.
In these respects the BL 19th century newspaper website is much superior. Its drawback is that it is limited to only 2 Irish newspapers.
If the Irish Newspaper archive expands its coverage of 19th century newspapers and improves its search technique it will be a very valuable resource.