Galway County Council Archives has digitised and released the Board of Guardian (BoG) minutes for 1853-1868 for the Loughrea workhouse (GPL2/). They join the 13 volumes of earlier minutes, dating from 1839-1852, that were made available online in 2020
These can all be freely accessed as downloadable pdfs from the Galway CC Digital Archive.
However, the descriptive list for this collection is very useful to researchers; it includes not only a brief history of the union and its workhouse, but also several appendices of interest, particularly a list of those staff members and of inmates who held a certain level of authority within the institution.
There were ten workhouses in County Galway in the second half of the 19th century. BoG Minute Books for seven of them – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Glenamaddy, Gort, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam – have been digitised and indexed by FindMyPast, where they can be searched in the Workhouses and Poor Law collection.
The Council does not hold any Minute Books for Oughterard PLU. This means the Minute Books for 1869–1922 for Loughrea Union and the 1866-1922 books for Galway Union are the only elements of this collection still awaiting digitisation.