Special Projects Division

The Special Projects Division deals with large-scale digitisation projects, partnership publication projects and national-level policy on cultural digitisation. The largest project undertaken so far has been the online census for 1901 and 1911 which has received hundreds of millions of hits and over 10 million individual visits.

The Division has also produced a cd-rom showcasing the National Archives’ holdings relating to local history, with almost 1,000 scanned and transcribed documents, county histories and illustrative contextual material. Counties in Time can be purchased from Eneclann.

Current and forthcoming digital projects include: the Crowley Bequest website (a digital catalogue to the first years of our most important collection, the Chief Secretary’s Office Registered Papers); the Bureau of Military History website in partnership with the Military Archives, containing searchable transcripts of the oral history of Ireland’s revolutionary period; the Tithe Applotment Book (1823–1837) images and names index placed online in partnership with the Church of the Latter Day Saints and digitised images of the Relief Commission Papers dealing with the Great Famine in the years 1845–1847.

The Division Head is one of the editors of Documents on Irish Foreign Policy which has so far published seven volumes of documents relating to Irish foreign policy during the years 1919–1945, the vast majority of them held in the National Archives. The project operates from the National Archives and also has a significant online presence at www.difp.ie.

The Division Head sits on various committees dealing with initiatives such as DARIAH, CULTURA, the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht Working Group on Genealogy, the Military Service Pensions Project, and others.

For queries regarding the work of this Division, please contact mail@nationalarchives.ie.