Irish History Online: An on-line bibliography of Irish history
Published in Issue 6 (November/December 2015), News, Volume 23This year is proving to be an important one for Irish History Online (www.irishhistoryonline.ie) and its associated network, the European Historical Bibliographies project (www.histbib.eu). A milestone has been reached with the publication of the proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on European Historical Bibliographies. This collection, entitled Historical bibliography as an essential source for historiography (Newcastle-on-Tyne, 2015), is edited by Bernadette Cunningham of the Royal Irish Academy in conjunction with three members of the Czech Historical Bibliography project team. It contains seventeen essays on a range of European bibliographic database projects, including Irish History Online. The first half of the book is broadly historical, while the second half addresses technical issues of database design and use in optimising the value of bibliographies within the humanities research infrastructure.
Historians in each European country recognise the value of national historical bibliographies as part of the fundamental research infrastructure in the humanities. The European Historical Bibliographies network exists to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas and expertise on a Europe-wide basis. The network promotes greater cooperation across Europe in compiling and disseminating bibliographic data on historical topics, so as to support transnational research. A shared on-line presence and ultimately a common technical platform for the sixteen participating bibliographies is envisaged. The Irish History Online project, managed by the Royal Irish Academy Library, is the Irish national bibliography for history and is an active participant in the European Historical Bibliographies network.
Since 2010 Irish History Online has been hosted by the Royal Irish Academy (RIA), under the management of the RIA Library.
What makes Irish History Online different from a library catalogue is that it facilitates searches for bibliographic information not just on books and pamphlets but also on chapters from books of essays, including Festschriften and conference proceedings. It also includes information about individual art-icles in journals published in Ireland and internationally. It itemises the contents of a wide range of local journals published throughout Ireland, north and south. This makes Irish History Online an essential guide to what is published about Irish history, and it is very widely used by professional historians, local historians, students of Irish history, genealogists and general readers. It is regularly updated and is free to use. Much of what has been published on Irish history in the past six months is already listed.
The Irish History Online project is now twelve years old. It was established at NUI Maynooth in 2003 with a three-year start-up grant from the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS). It received another IRCHSS project grant for the years 2006–9. In that time the annual bibliographies that had appeared in Irish Historical Studies since 1938 were converted to an on-line database, coverage was expanded to include the Irish abroad, and additional updates were made. Irish Research Council funding for the project ended in September 2009.
Since January 2010 Irish History Online has been hosted by the Royal Irish Academy (RIA), under the management of the RIA Library. It receives a small annual grant from the Irish Committee for Historical Sciences. In the absence of the research funding that should be provided for such a fundamental element of the humanities research infrastructure in Ireland, the work is done by volunteer compilers. Information on new publications is currently compiled and input by three volunteers: Máirín Cassidy (formerly UCD Library), Dr Ciarán McCabe (Maynooth University and NUI Galway) and Dr Bernadette Cunningham (RIA Library).
The project would like to recruit an additional volunteer to assist in this important work and to help develop the database in new ways. If you think you have the
necessary expertise and can commit at least one day a week to the project (based in the Library of the Royal Irish Academy, 19 Dawson Street, Dublin 2), do please get in touch. Among the competencies required are a very high level of accuracy in data-compilation and editing, a good knowledge of Irish history, and good proficiency in Irish as well as excellent English. The managing editor, Dr Bernadette Cunningham, can be contacted at iho@ria.ie, and the convenor, Prof. Jacqueline Hill, can be contacted at Jacqueline.Hill@nuim.ie.
Personal Histories
On this Day
April 24
- 1951 Enda Kenny, TD for Mayo West (1975–97) and Mayo (1997–2020), leader of Fine Gael (2002–17) and taoiseach (2011–17), born in Derrycoosh, Islandeady, near Castlebar, Co. Mayo.
- 1945
Above: The steamship Monmouth Coast—torpedoed by a German U-boat near Tory Island on 24 April 1945. (Paul Johnson Collection)
During the last week of the Second World War, the Monmouth Coast, an unescorted steamship en route from Sligo to Liverpool with a cargo of barytes ore from the mines of Ben Bulben, was torpedoed by a German U-boat some seven miles north-east of Tory Island. The captain and fifteen crewmen (including two Irishmen) lost their lives, but one managed to survive, thanks to two locals from Arranmore. Two days later, whilst beachcombing on the north-eastern coast of the island, they spotted a life-raft floating in a remote sandy inlet; they rowed out to it and lifted the tarpaulin, to discover a wide-eyed teenager, Derek Cragg (17) from Liverpool, the mess-room boy from the Monmouth Coast. He explained that the ship had gone down very quickly and that those of the crew who managed to leap clear were sucked down after it. He, too, was dragged down but somehow managed to make it back to the surface, where he spotted the life-raft and clambered on board. He was given every assistance by the islanders and safely repatriated, but had the north-easterly wind that drove him 25 miles blown him into the adjoining inlet, his raft would have been smashed to pieces. Over 30,000 Allied merchant seamen, of every nationality, lost their lives during the war. Despite our neutrality, Irish Shipping lost two ships. The Irish Pine was torpedoed off Greenland in November 1942 with the loss of all 33 on board, and the Irish Oak was sunk in the North Atlantic in May 1943, though her entire crew was rescued by a sister-ship, the Irish Plane.
- 1912 Justin McCarthy (82), Home Rule politician, leader of the anti-Parnellite faction (1891–6), historian and novelist, died.
- 1916 The Easter Rising began.Sir Ernest Shackleton and five of his crew set out on their epic 720-nautical-mile rescue mission in the James Caird, from Elephant Island to South Georgia.
- 1974 The Electricity Supply Board (ESB) announced that Carnsore Point, Co. Wexford, would be the site of its planned nuclear power station.
May 19
- 1935
Above: ‘Lawrence of Arabia’—his father was in fact Sir Thomas Chapman of South Hill, Delvin, Co. Westmeath.
T.E.—Thomas Edward—Lawrence (46), the legendary ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, died as a result of a motorcycle accident in Dorset. For much of his adult life Lawrence was a troubled man. Though his key role in the British-inspired Arab revolt (1916) against Ottoman Turkish rule earned him international celebrity, he was torn by guilt over Britain’s post-war betrayal of the Arabs with the implementation at Versailles of the notorious Sykes–Picot Agreement. Then there was the issue of identity. At the tender age of ten he discovered that his parents were not married, meaning that he and his four brothers were illegitimate. Later he was to learn that ‘Mr Lawrence’, his father, was, in fact, Sir Thomas Chapman of South Hill, Delvin, Co. Westmeath, who, though married with four daughters, had fled with their governess, Sarah Lawrence, first to Wales—where ‘Ned’ was born—and finally to London. He was eventually to find himself increasingly drawn to his father’s homeland. A close friend of George Bernard Shaw and his wife Charlotte—GBS had helped him to edit his major work, Seven pillars of wisdom (1926)—he mentioned his desire in his surviving letters to visit Ireland and often referred to the works of Seán O’Casey, James Joyce and J.M. Synge. Indeed, he hoped to write a biography of Sir Roger Casement. It seems that he never did try to make contact with his half-sisters. In 1954, almost twenty years after his death, some of his old friends visited the two surviving ones, who were living at 39 Northumberland Road, Dublin. They told them that they had followed their half-brother’s career with great interest but likewise had made no attempt to contact him.
- 1870 The Home Government Association of Ireland was founded by Isaac Butt with the aim of establishing a federal system for the United Kingdom, which would grant Ireland a parliament responsible for national affairs. Succeeded by the Home Rule League (1873).
- 1868 Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness, son of Arthur Guinness (1725–1803), brewer and writer who restored St Patrick’s Cathedral (1860), died.