Tuesday 13 August 2019

Irish Genealogy News reaches out beyond Ireland

Today, Irish Genealogy News will be starting a new series of blogposts bringing you news of international record releases and updated collections.

The Irish have, after all, emigrated and settled around the globe in vast numbers so while I have up to now restricted my blog to Irish collections plus only occasional news of record sets from further afield with a significant proportion of content related to individuals of Irish heritage (AmericanAncestors.org's collection from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Massachussetts springs to mind), I'm going to take it one step further now.

I've taken this decision because the heady days are over when digitised Irish collections came tumbling out of major and regional archives at a rate and a half. Irish family historians have already begun to extend or widen their research to those who left Ireland, while those descended from Irish immigrants in other countries may appreciate being kept up to date with developments in their home country. So this seems a natural progression for the blog.

I'm not taking on the World here. That would be prepostrous... I'm just one person, and already busy enough, thank you.

To provide consistent and reliable content and keep it manageable (fingers crossed), I'll be extending coverage only to Australia/New Zealand, Britain, Canada and the USA, and even then only to the more mainstream genealogical collections at state, region or major city level. I'll group together all the recent releases and updates from one geographical area into one blogpost at a time and will aim to publish each at least monthly.

These will be listings, with minimal additional information, but each entry will be linked directly (where possible) to its respective collection database so that you can immediately learn more about the collection and/or search it for your ancestors. I won't, as a rule, be providing general news and developments from these world regions in the way I do with the island of Ireland.

The first of these blogposts – for England, Scotland and Wales – will be published shortly. I'll publish the second before the day is out. The listings for the USA and Canada will follow tomorrow and Thursday.

I hope they'll prove useful.