Click on logo to go to site I recently caught up with what's been happening on this fascinating project via a talk on the Irish Genealogical Research Society's website, given by Dr Ciaran Wallace of Trinity College Dublin (hopefully still available if you follow this link.) If you click on the logo to the left you will go to the project's home page where you can find much more about the plans and progress.
Briefly, the project has bold ambitions to harness the power of technology to re-create in a virtual format as much as possible of the contents of the doomed Public Record Repository that littered the Dublin skyline with seven hundred years of burning historical documents nearly 100 years ago. Ironic when you consider that after earlier conflagrations at storage facilities elsewhere in Dublin, the new building was so carefully designed to be fireproof as Dr. Wallace explains in his talk.
I must admit when I first heard about the project it seemed to be all about virtual reality headsets and the task of reassembling anywhere near enough material sounded daunting to say the least. However, listening to Dr. Wallace talk enthusiastically about how the process of collaboration right across the world is being hugely assisted with the power of clever programming, I started to feel that this way of thinking about curating genealogical resources could just as easily be applied to other archives. By tracking down Victorian and Edwardian transcripts, snippets of personal research, legal papers lurking in law offices and even old photographs of documents, the project is gradually re-assembling some of the lost treasures. They have even invested in some clever software that can turn handwriting into transcribed content very quickly.
Keep an eye on this project as you never know what it might recreate that could help your research
Briefly, the project has bold ambitions to harness the power of technology to re-create in a virtual format as much as possible of the contents of the doomed Public Record Repository that littered the Dublin skyline with seven hundred years of burning historical documents nearly 100 years ago. Ironic when you consider that after earlier conflagrations at storage facilities elsewhere in Dublin, the new building was so carefully designed to be fireproof as Dr. Wallace explains in his talk.
I must admit when I first heard about the project it seemed to be all about virtual reality headsets and the task of reassembling anywhere near enough material sounded daunting to say the least. However, listening to Dr. Wallace talk enthusiastically about how the process of collaboration right across the world is being hugely assisted with the power of clever programming, I started to feel that this way of thinking about curating genealogical resources could just as easily be applied to other archives. By tracking down Victorian and Edwardian transcripts, snippets of personal research, legal papers lurking in law offices and even old photographs of documents, the project is gradually re-assembling some of the lost treasures. They have even invested in some clever software that can turn handwriting into transcribed content very quickly.
Keep an eye on this project as you never know what it might recreate that could help your research
RSS Feed
