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Dick Spring for Taoiseach

Labour Party Archive

Last October, the Labour Party donated its archive to us here at the National Library. This fascinating collection reaches right back to the Party's foundation in 1912. Project archivist, Ross...
Family History Research

Family History Research

by Ciara Kerrigan, Research Services Thousands of people visit us here at the NLI each year to carry out research on their family history. Many of these visitors know little or nothing about where to...
Catalogue

Celebrating the Commons on Flickr, Part Deux

This is our second blog post celebrating the 5th anniversary of The Commons on Flickr which falls tomorrow, Wednesday 16 January. This means a 5th Birthday for the Library of Congress photostream....
Flickr Commons

Celebrating The Commons on Flickr

Next Wednesday, 16 January, is the 5th anniversary of The Commons on Flickr. 56 libraries, archives, museums and galleries all over the world (including us) make up Flickr Commons. We all share our...
1891 Dublin Guide

Guide Books to the Second City in the Empire

by Katy Milligan, NLI habitué and PhD student at TRIARC (The Irish Art Research Centre, TCD) Lurking among the shelves of the NLI is a group of texts which has lately caught my attention. While I...
A view of the four courts

Pettyfoggers and Vipers

by Sean Smith, Researcher at our "Palace to Procrastination" Lawyers and the legal profession, where would we be without them? If it wasn’t for them we wouldn’t have Dickens’ Bleak House and...
Richard Lovell Edgeworth

The ingenious Mr. Edgeworth

by Áine Finegan, former Research and Reference Team Student As the City of Science for 2012, Dublin is playing host to all things scientific this year and here at the National Library we're...
The Campanile at Trinity College Dublin, long before the M.Phil in Public History and Cultural Heritage was a twinkle in anyone's eye. (Lawrence Postcard Series)

Postcards and public history

by Chantal Sweeney, M.Phil. in Public History & Cultural Heritage at Trinity College Dublin Like many people, I spent the majority of last Christmas holidays lounging around in my pyjamas,...
From the Appendix to the Sixth Annual Report of the Poor Law Commissioners for England and Wales, 1840

Researching the Irish Famine

by Sarah O'Connor, Learning & Outreach Over the summer of 2011, the Learning and Outreach department here at the National Library worked on a new project about the Irish Famine with St. John of...
This illustration in our Prints & Drawings collection shows that safety lessons were learned following the sinking of the Titanic (supplement from the Parisian daily, Le Petit Journal, no. 16, June 1912)

Poor old Titanic, it is a heart-rending story

by Áine Finegan, Reference Team Student The centenary of the sinking of the Titanic is fast approaching with the one-hundredth anniversary of both her maiden voyage and demise in April 2012. The...
We're still looking after election posters 'in the flesh', but we've also started web archiving - firstly the February 2011 General Election and most recently the Presidential Election. This Sinn Féin election poster dates from 1918, while the Dylan Haskins election web page was harvested on 21 February 2011...

Behind the scenes

by Jenny Doyle, Oscail Programme Manager While the National Library holds wonderful collections of rare and antiquarian books, manuscripts, photographs, maps, prints and drawings (some of which...
Felix M. Larkin delivering the address at the Ivy Day commemoration of the death of Charles Stewart Parnell in Glasnevin Cemetery, 4 October 2009

Bishop Plunket, Yeats and JFK

by FELIX M. LARKIN, Vice-chair of the NLI Society and member of the NLI’s Readers Advisory Committee When I was at school in St Paul's College, Raheny, the imp in me was always amused by the fact...
Gorgeously Gory Ghastly Murder Image supplied by photographer Michael Stamp

The Spectre of Blood

by Abigail Rieley - Writer, Journalist, Court Reporter & NLI Reader The ghosts of the forgotten haunt the National Library of Ireland; those whose stories lie in out of print pages or hidden in...
The well in the old mill at Inniskerry, Co. Wicklow by George Cash, ca. 1819. NLI call no.: ET 1839 TA

A lesson on the limits of the Internet

by Michael Seery, NLI reader / chemistry lecturer / local historian extraordinaire The problem with the Internet is that it’s really, just, very good. With a few keywords, I can easily compile...