The Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland

Talk details

The Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland was launched in June 2022, on the centenary of the destruction of the Public Record Office of Ireland at the Four Courts in 1922. The Virtual Treasury brings together tens of thousands of copy records and transcripts to replace, as far as possible, the vast collection destroyed in that opening engagement of the Irish Civil War a century ago. Funded by the Department of Culture as part of the Decade of Centenaries, this is a free, public online resource which will continue to grow. With millions of words of searchable text it is an exciting new resource available to anyone interested in Irish history.

In this talk, Ciarán Wallace will begin by telling the story of the lost Public Record Office and explaining how the team of historians, archivists and computer scientists collaborated to virtually recreate many of its lost collections. He will then demonstrate resources available for local researchers in the Virtual Treasury.

Ciarán Wallace is the Deputy Director of the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland