Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland

Have you discovered the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland yet?  This new website described itself as "an all-island and international legacy for the Decade of Centenaries.

The Treasury re-imagines and reconstructs through digital technologies the Public Record Office of Ireland, a magnificent archive destroyed on June 30th, 1922, in the opening engagement of the Civil War. 

This is an open-access resource, freely and permanently available online to all those interested in Ireland’s deep history at home and abroad. Together with our partners across Ireland and around the world, we are democratizing access to invaluable records and illuminating seven centuries of Irish history."

In 1922, the Irish Record Treasury contained

• 100,000 square feet of archival shelving
• organised into 4,500 series of records
• accumulated over 7 centuries.
• It was destroyed in 1 afternoon.

In 2022, the Virtual Record Treasury democratizes access to

• 50 million words of searchable text spanning 7 centuries
• 2.7 million knowledge graph triples
• 150,000+ database records
• 6,000+ maps
• created with the support of 70 archival partners.

The reconstructed records currently available include the Medieval Exchequer of the 13th-15 Centuries, the Cromwellian Surveys of the 17th Century and the 1766 Religious Census.

So take a look at this great new resource and see what it has to offer you in your research.