National Library of Ireland Digitisation Project

Something I missed in the previous post is that National Library of Ireland is undertaking a massive digitisation of Irish Records. The NLI is in the process of digitising more than 400,000 images of Catholic parish registers which it will make available on-line free of charge. This project is already being described as “the most significant ever digitisation project for Irish genealogy” and the NLI is expecting records to be available as early as the middle of 2015. The digital images due to be published by the NLI will be searchable by parish location only. They will not be transcribed or indexed by the NLI, and the images will be of the microfilms of the original registers, which – in some cases – were in poor condition when the microfilming took place. The images will be in black and white. The information in the registers varies from parish to parish but, typically, includes the dates of the baptisms or marriages, and the names of the key people involved, including godparents or witnesses.