A New Permanent Home for the Irish Republican Digital Archive
The Irish Republican Digital Archive has moved to the Internet Archive.
More than 7,100 historical documents have already been transferred, with material from the existing backlog still to be added. Once this work is complete, the collection will contain more than 7,500 documents, all freely available to browse, search, read online and download.
This move gives the collection a long-term home on one of the world’s largest digital libraries and, importantly, introduces new ways to search and explore the material that were not possible through the original website.
Browse the Irish Republican Digital Archive on the Internet Archive →
The archive remains free and open
Nothing is being placed behind a subscription or paywall. The documents remain freely accessible and can be read online or downloaded.
Republicanarchive.com will remain online as the gateway to the collection, providing information about the archive and straightforward guidance on how to find and use material on the Internet Archive.
How to use the Internet archive
One of the major advantages of the move is that thousands of documents can now be explored together as a single collection.
Rather than relying solely on the sections and categories of the old website, the Internet Archive provides several different ways of finding material.
Search the collection
The collection can be searched for publications, organisations, people, places or subjects.
A simple search such as “vote”, for example, brings together election posters, leaflets, newspapers and other material from different periods and organisations.
Browse and filter by year
The collection can be filtered by publication year.
For example, selecting 1975 currently brings together more than 200 documents from that year, including issues of An Phoblacht, Republican News, The Starry Plough, calendars and other publications and ephemera.
This makes it possible to view material produced by different organisations alongside one another and compare how they covered the events and issues of the same period.
Search the text inside thousands of documents
One of the most useful new features is the ability to search the text contained within documents, where searchable text is available.
This means that a person, place, organisation or subject does not need to appear in the title of a document for it to be discovered.
For example, a text search for Dáithí Ó Conaill returns references from across newspapers, newsletters and other documents in the collection, including material where his name does not appear in the document title.
This opens thousands of pages to a level of searching that was not previously possible through republicanarchive.com.
Read documents online
Documents can be opened and read directly through the Internet Archive’s online reader without downloading them first.
This makes it easy to browse an issue or publication immediately from its archive page.
Download documents
Documents can also be downloaded for offline reading, research or personal preservation.
On an individual item’s page, scroll to Download Options and select PDF to download the document.
More than 7,500 documents preserved
What began two years ago as a personal collection of a few hundred documents ultimately grew into an archive of thousands of items drawn from numerous collections.
The migration to the Internet Archive means that this substantial body of historical material can remain preserved, freely accessible and available for future research.
The future of the project
With the migration substantially complete, the Irish Republican Digital Archive as an active digitising project has now concluded.
A limited amount of material acquired before the decision was made will continue to be processed and transferred in my own time. This represents the completion of outstanding work rather than a continuation or relaunch of the project.
I am no longer accepting new donations, submissions or offers of material.
The decision to conclude the active project was a considered one after two years of work and the growth of the archive from a few hundred documents to more than 7,500. For those interested in the reasons behind that decision, I have written a separate explanation.
Read about the conclusion of the active digitising project →