Huge newspaper repository now available to all

The most ambitious digital archive project ever undertaken in this country - which has seen over 110 years of Meath Chronicle pages transferred to the internet - has just been accomplished by Irish Newspaper Archives (INA). The massive project has involved the complete digitisation of much of Ireland"s newspaper heritage, whereby millions of complete pages of a number of the country"s key regional newspapers have been scanned from microfilm and uploaded to a new website, www.irishnewsarchive.com The Meath Chronicle is one of 13 regional newspapers already signed up to the project, in addition to the Irish Independent and the Irish Farmers Journal. With over 110 years of local history at their fingertips, this new Meath Chronicle digital archive offers users unprecedented access to the events and people that have helped shaped this county since the late 1800s. In addition, the major global events which have marked the past century can be viewed as they were reported at the time. Seminal moments in Irish history, such as the 1916 Rising and the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty establishing the Free State in 1921, as well as the events which led to the modern Irish Republic, are all contained within the pages of the paper, as are many of the great sporting moments, from Meath"s first All-Ireland win in 1949 to the most recent triumph 50 years later. The archive offers researchers of all levels and interests a very powerful and easily accessible tool that combines the latest in technology with a rich tapestry of history across topics that range from sport to politics, crime to business and everything in between. With a database that is fully searchable, amateur and professional genealogists can now easily browse births, deaths, marriages and local news stories from 1897 to the present era, or quickly find that long-lost story about a family member or ancestor that has been passed down through the generations. While, on the one hand, the new digital resource is aimed at universities and institutes specialising in Irish studies around the world, it has also been developed with the individual user in mind and the archive has thus been created for ease of access by ordinary people seeking to find out about their family or events in which their antecedents may have been involved. With increased functionalities allowing for photographic and advertisement searches and accessed via an online portal implemented in association with Smedia, INA has used state-of-the-art technologies to bring a new and exciting digital archive to the public of County Meath. With its extensive collection of national, regional and out-of-print titles, the casual and serious researcher alike can gain access to a vast wealth of past and present newspaper titles through a range of simple and affordable packages. Irish Newspaper Archives has been the number one provider of microfilm relating to historical Irish newspapers for over 40 years, providing libraries and universities worldwide with access to a massive repository of Irish historical information that is not available anywhere else. Utilising world-leading Olive Software, the new digital platform developed by INA now allows members of the public, as well as universities and institutes, unprecedented access to historical, social and political information and reports from the last four centuries, with 16 newspaper titles already online and more to come.