We've been doing our hard sums

by Jenny Doyle,  Digitisation Programme Co-ordinator

42,430 + 12,000 = 11%

For those of you with Holmesian standard detection abilities, apologies for this update, as you have probably already noticed something different about the NLI’s catalogue. For those less eagle-eyed or less regular users of our collections, I’d like to draw your attention to a big number: 54,430. To the untrained eye not a particularly significant or memorable number, but for those of you interested in seeing our wonderful and unique collections of photos, prints and drawings, manuscripts and ephemera without coming all the way to Kildare Street in Dublin, it means we’ve added 12,000 digital items that can be viewed through our online catalogue in the last 6 months.

So now 11% of catalogued NLI collections are available digitally for you to research, enjoy, marvel at, be surprised or intrigued by - all from the comfort of your own digital device. You can see the full detail of any of these images by using our Mega Zoomifier (patent pending) image viewers. These allow you to zoom in and move around the image in great detail.

One of my own favourites is from our Elinor Wiltshire photographic collection - a boy with a bucket and spade on Sandymount Strand, Dublin in 1969. I like the specifically Irish beach attire - shorts AND an Aran jumper!

As a path into all of this digitised material, it might help you to explore some individual pieces or collections first. You could try our Douglas Hyde Photographs; Topographia Hibernica; Tuke Photographs; Wallace Album; 1798 material; Longfield Maps; Wiltshire Photographs; Grace Gifford collection; Gordon Brewster cartoons. Or you could get absolutely lost (in a good way) in our amazing collection of printed ephemera!

All of these 12,000 images have been brought to you by the hardworking elves of Library Towers or as they are more usually known, our staff, particularly the conservation interns and Digital Studio staff.