Until this morning, when news was carried over the waves of a partnership between Ancestry.com and the Dublin-based IrishNewsArchives which has resulted in a new standalone site: IrishNewspapers.com.
There's an explanation for why the news took 48 hours to reach these shores. The new site, IrishNewspapers.com, is available only in the USA. When I visit it, I'm re-directed to IrishNewsArchive.com, so I can't comment on how it functions, although I did manage to catch a screengrab of the home page before the redirect kicked in:
Phillip Martin of Irish News Archives spoke to Irish Genealogy News this morning to reveal more about this exciting development for the family-owned company.
"IrishNewspapers.com is derived from the current Irish News Archives but will be overseen in the US by Ancestry's Newspapers.com," he explained. "Partnering with Newspapers.com offers Irish News Archives a pathway to the expansive US market.
"The new US site has launched with a first tranche of Irish historical newspapers from across the island. More titles will be added in due course."
Subscriptions to the US site cost $19.99 monthly and $99.99 annually (Ireland site is €30 per month or €178 per year).
A marked difference between the two sites is that IrishNewspapers.com will offer editions up to 1980, while the Irish market, via the existing IrishNewsArchive.com, will continue to offer a growing range of Irish newspaper titles up to the current year.
Phillip also told me of a new subscription feature available via IrishNewsArchive. New members can avail of a 3-day free trial before signing up for longer term subscriptions. Researchers sign up, with credit card details, for a month's subscription, but they aren't charged until the three days is up. They can cancel the subscription at anytime during the three-day trial.
Details of the free trial are now published on the IrishNewsArchive.com website.
UPDATE 26 March 2015: Kilkenny-raised genealogist Joe Buggy has access to the IrishNewspapers.com because he's now based in Washington DC; he's written a thorough review of the new website, providing a list of all the papers in the database, on his TownlandOfOrigin blog.
UPDATE 25 February 2016: The US site closed.
2023 Note: Images have been removed and most links disabled on this old blogpost.