Thursday, March 26, 2015

New Website: Irishnewspapers.com

Last week, there was an interesting development for Irish genealogy in the U.S – Newspapers.com (owned by Ancestry.com) has partnered with Ireland-based Irish Newspaper Archives (Irishnewsarchive.com) to launch a US version of this website called Irish Newspapers (Irishnewspapers.com). Confused with all that? Well, this all boils down to there now being a U.S. based website where you can do research in local and national newspapers from Ireland and pay in dollars.

Irish Newspaper Archives has been in existence for a number of years and currently has 46 digitized local and national newspapers. Not all of these papers are available on the US site; 37 titles are by my count. Those that have made the migration to the US site are only available up to 1980, with the earliest year of coverage starting in 1738.


The website has the same format and search functionality as the existing Ancestry newspaper site, Newspapers.com. Currently, Irishnewspapers.com lacks some of the bells and whistles of the parent site but these will probably be added in due course. The search functionality allows for keywords, places and dates. There is a useful ‘Papers’ section where you can get to grips with what papers are available and what time period they cover.

The browse format is very user friendly and you can quickly get to a specific county, title, or date of interest using this feature. There is one very significant error in the way the papers have been allocated in the browse function. All of the newspapers that have national coverage have been placed in the ‘County – Dublin’ section. This is particularly unfortunate as, for example, the Irish Independent and Irish Press are available to search for many years from the 20th century and families from all over Ireland placed death notices in these papers.

I have been surprised over the last couple of years by the lack of knowledge about the existence of Irish Newspaper Archives among the Irish genealogy community in the U.S. It’s rarely mentioned in the same breath as the well-known Rootsireland.ie and National Archives of Ireland website (genealogy.nationalarchives.ie). I don’t believe that’s the fault of folks on this site of the Atlantic as it’s not heavily advertised or promoted on the ‘starter’ websites, such as the Irish government’s Irishgenealogy.ie.  It will be interesting to see if this will change now that commercial behemoth Ancestry.com is involved. If you plan on doing research on the new site there are two subscription pricing options, $19.99 per month and $99.99 for one year.

Below, you will find a table of all the newspapers that are available on both Irishnewspapers.com (US) and Irishnewsarchive.com (Ireland). Titles in bold are only available on the Ireland-based website and you’ll have to subscribe to that site if you want access to them.

Geographical
Coverage
Title
Years Digitized
(Format is day/month/year)
Website
Availability
Notes:  •They are gaps in the years of coverage that have been digitized
               •Table last updated 24 March 2015
               •Some papers listed under county Mayo such as Connaught Telegraph and  
                 Western People also cover counties Galway, Roscommon, Sligo, and Leitrim     
National
03/01/1763 - 19/12/1924
Irishnewspapers.com
National
30/08/1841 - 31/12/1949
Irishnewsarchive.com only
National
16/03/1957 - Current
Irishnewspapers.com (see Irishnewsarchive.com for 1980-Present)
National
02/01/1905 - Current
Irishnewspapers.com (see Irishnewsarchive.com for 1980-Present)
National
05/09/1931 - 25/05/1995
Irishnewspapers.com (see Irishnewsarchive.com for 1980-1995)
National
07/01/1906 - Current
Irishnewspapers.com (see Irishnewsarchive.com for 1980-Present)
Northern
Ireland
09/01/1738 - 30/08/1890
Irishnewspapers.com
Cavan
06/02/1846 - Current
Irishnewspapers.com (see Irishnewsarchive.com for 1980-Present)
Cork
02/01/1882 - 08/07/1922
Irishnewspapers.com
Cork
13/02/1892 - Current
Irishnewspapers.com (see Irishnewsarchive.com for 1980-Present)
Donegal
14/03/1903 - Current
Irishnewspapers.com (see Irishnewsarchive.com for 1980-Present)
Dublin
The Nation
15/10/1842 - 05/06/1897
Irishnewspapers.com
Fermanagh
09/02/2011 - Current
Irishnewsarchive.com only
Galway
02/08/1927 - Current
Irishnewspapers.com (see irishnewsarchive.com for 1980-Present)
Galway
22/05/1909 - Current
Irishnewspapers.com (see Irishnewsarchive.com for 1980-Present)
Galway
07/09/1984 - Current
Irishnewsarchive.com only
Galway
13/05/1837 - Current
Irishnewspapers.com (see Irishnewsarchive.com for 1980-Present)
Kerry
20/08/1904 - Current
Irishnewspapers.com (see Irishnewsarchive.com for 1980-Present)
Kerry
Kerry Independent
28/10/1880 - 10/01/1884
Irishnewsarchive.com only
Kerry
Kerry Star
15/05/1861 - 27/03/1863
Irishnewsarchive.com only
Kerry
Killarney Echo & South Kerry Chronicle
26/08/1899 - 14/08/1920
Irishnewsarchive.com only
Kildare
Kildare Observer
23/10/1880 - 04/05/1935
Irishnewspapers.com
Kilkenny
Finn’s Leinster Journal
01/04/1792 - 31/12/1828
Irishnewspapers.com
Kilkenny
01/01/1921 - Current
Irishnewspapers.com (see Irishnewsarchive.com for 1980-Present)
Leitrim
02/01/1904 -Current
Irishnewspapers.com (see Irishnewsarchive.com for 1980-Present)
Limerick
02/01/1905 - Current
Irishnewspapers.com (see Irishnewsarchive.com for 1980-Present)
Longford
14/08/1897 - Current
Irishnewspapers.com (see Irishnewsarchive.com for 1980-Present)
Louth
Dundalk Democrat
20/10/1849 - Current
Irishnewspapers.com (see Irishnewsarchive.com for 1980-Present)
Mayo
03/02/1866 - 10/09/1903
Irishnewspapers.com
Mayo
06/08/1927 - 28/04/1962
Irishnewspapers.com
Mayo
22/09/1830 - Current
Irishnewspapers.com (see Irishnewsarchive.com for 1980-Present)
Mayo
Mayo Examiner
06/07/1868 - 30/12/1876
Irishnewspapers.com
Mayo
Mayo News
07/01/1893 – 29/12/2004
Irishnewspapers.com (see Irishnewsarchive.com for 1980-Present)
Mayo
03/06/1977 - 11/03/1983
Irishnewspapers.com (see Irishnewsarchive.com for 1980-1983)
Mayo
04/05/1889 - Current
Irishnewspapers.com (see Irishnewsarchive.com for 1980-Present)
Meath
01/05/1897 - Current
Irishnewspapers.com (see Irishnewsarchive.com for 1980-Present)
Montana

Butte Independent
22/01/1910 - 27/12/1930
Irishnewsarchive.com only
Offaly
Leinster Express
24/09/1831 - Current
Irishnewspapers.com (see Irishnewsarchive.com for 1980-Present)
Tipperary
21/07/1838 - Current
Irishnewspapers.com (see Irishnewsarchive.com for 1980-Present)
Tipperary
Nenagh News
05/01/1895 - 28/12/1924
Irishnewspapers.com
Tyrone
14/01/2011 - Current
Irishnewsarchive.com only
Tyrone
10/02/2011 - Current
Irishnewsarchive.com only
Tyrone
07/02/2011 - Current
Irishnewsarchive.com only
Tyrone
15/08/1901 - Current
Irishnewspapers.com (see Irishnewsarchive.com for 1980-Present)
Waterford
04/01/1908 - Current
Irishnewspapers.com (see Irishnewsarchive.com for 1980-Present)
Westmeath
28/09/1882 - Current
Irishnewspapers.com (see Irishnewsarchive.com for 1980-Present)

                          

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