The Church of Ireland Gazette Digital Archive is now complete. All editions of the newspaper from its foundation in 1856 up to and including 2010 are available electronically and free to search and view at esearch.informa.ie/rcb. (From 2010, the Gazette became available as an e-paper.)
Written and read by lay and clerical members and others, the Gazette provides the longest-running public commentary on the Church’s affairs, and as such is recognised as a valuable primary source for understanding the complexities and nuance of Church of Ireland and indeed wider Protestant identity, as well as the Church’s contribution to political and cultural life across the island.
The digitisation project began eight years ago when the RCB Library digitized and uploaded the 1913 editions.
Since then, a combination of state funding, private sponsorship and the support of central Church funds has enabled evolutionary growth of the project, and thanks to the generous grant from the Irish Government’s Reconciliation Fund, administered by the Department of Foreign Affairs, this is now complete, with a permanent digital archive available online for future generations of researchers.
This final instalment of digitised editions is reviewed by the Archbishop of Armagh, John McDowell, as the RCB Library's February Archive of the Month.
In announcing the delivery of the final tranche, Dr Susan Hood, Librarian and Archivist of the RCB Library, thanked the current Editor and Board of the Church of Ireland Gazette who have collaborated so positively with the Library since the inception of the project, and the Gazette office staff whose input of PDF documents for the period between 2004 and 2010 had allowed the final bonus years to be added to the database, expertly overseen by service provider Informa. Finally, she sincerely acknowledged the Department of Foreign Affairs’ Reconciliation Fund whose generous grant ensured that this worthwhile project could be completed.