It makes for an interesting read as it sets out all the legislative and wide-ranging responsibilities of the National Archives of Ireland (NAI) – a useful reminder to those of us who might sometimes forget that the NAI's world does not begin and end with facilitating family historians!
The report also highlights the serious under-staffing of the archive, and its knock-on effects. This is an under-funding issue that's been the reality of the repository for far too long, and really does need addressing. (Perhaps a subject worth raising with any political hopefuls who come knocking for votes in the countdown to next week's election in the Republic!)
In 2014, the NAI's genealogy website saw the addition of Census Search Forms for 1841–1851, the pre-1901 Census Fragments 1821–1851, and the Irish Soldiers' Wills collection.
Here is a statistical summary of the NAI's year:
- 14,854 visits to the Bishop Street Reading Room
- 23,715 items produced for consultation
- 7,127 copies of archives made
- 18 million hits on the parent nationalarchives.ie website
- 564,188 unique visitors to the parent website
- 146 million hits on the 1901/1911 census.nationalarchives.ie website