 |
| 21 Irish titles are already included and more are on the way |
The BNA is a partnership between the British Library and DC Thomson Family History (parent of FindMyPast and GenesReunited) to digitise up to 40million newspaper pages from the British Library's vast collection. The website launched less than three years ago with 1million pages of pre-20th century newspapers, and its rate of digitisation has speeded up dramatically during 2014.
As well as being available on the BNA website, the digitised newspaper collection is included in FindMyPast's database.
A virtual newsstand of Irish publications have made their debut in the online archive during the summer and early autumn, and I was told at a meeting with the company in London last week that many more Irish newspaper pages will be appearing shortly.
So, this seems as good a day as any to catch up on the Irish offering on the BNA.
Here's a list of the Irish titles included in both the British Newspaper Archive database and the FindMyPast Irish collection (number of editions in brackets):
Belfast Daily Mercury (2,829)
Belfast News-Letter(15,090)
Belfast Mercantile Register and Weekly Advertiser(311)
Belfast Morning News(3,160)
Cork Examiner (5,896)
Downshire Protestant, The (256)
Drogheda Journal, or Meath & Louth Advertiser (1,115)
Drogheda News Letter (1)
Dublin Builder, The (12)
Dublin Evening Mail (6,075)
Dublin Mercantile Advertiser, and Weekly Price Current (52)
Dublin Monitor (803)
Freeman's Journal (20,298)
Galway Vindicator, and Connaught Advertiser (2,312)
Hibernian Journal; or, Chronicle of Liberty (1,425)
Irish Racing Book and Sheet Calendar, The (79)
Limerick Evening Post (17)
Limerick Reporter (617)
Northern Whig(1,818)
Newry Examiner and Louth Advertiser(520)
Pue's Occurrences (293)
Sligo Champion (291)
Ulsterman, The (481)
Waterford Chronicle (105)
The oldest edition is from Pue's Occurrences, which dates from 28 December 1748.
My calculator tots this up to around 63,000 editions. That's a lot of social history, and a huge mine of information about our ancestors and their communities.