Wednesday 12 August 2020

Beyond 2022 enters digitisation procurement process

It's good to see the Beyond 2022: Ireland's Virtual Record Treasure Research Project moving forward. This ambitious all-island and international collaborative research project, which is led by Trinity College Dublin, aims to create a virtual reality version of the Public Record Office of Ireland building and all its archival collections prior to their destruction during the War of Independence.

A Request for Tender (RFT) was posted last week on the Irish government's public procurement platform for a contract to digitise records currently held by the National Archives of Ireland (NAI).

As far as I'm aware, this RFT is the first for the Beyond 2022 project.

The RFT does not identify the records involved. It says: "Beyond 2022, working with the National Archives, has identified a large body of archival documents which contain valuable historical information relating to Ireland prior to 1922. These archives are in various formats, but the scope of this phase is primarily bound volumes."

Unfortunately, I've been unable to establish what this 'large body' of documents contains because the details are being kept quiet until the tendering process has completed. They may be of value to genealogists; they may not. I can't think of any really important collection of family history importance that hasn't already been made available on the NAI's Genealogy website or shared with database suppliers such as Ancestry and FindMyPast. But you never know.

All will be revealed in due course, I guess. And I'll let you know when I find out.

Any service provider wanting to formally express an interest can follow this link. The deadline is 1 September.