Internet Newsletter for Lawyers
March/April 2003, by Delia Venables

Historic Irish Parliamentary Papers

A project called Enhanced British Parliamentary Papers on Ireland (EPPI) is providing for the electronic cataloguing and full-text digitisation of some 13,700 British Parliamentary papers (containing around 365,000 pages) from the University of Southampton's Ford Collection of Official Publications.

The new site, at www.eppi.ac.uk, represents Phase 1 of the project (launched on 19th February) and provides a comprehensive searchable database of Parliamentary Papers relating to Ireland 1801-1922, with bibliographic information, Library of Congress subject descriptors and, for a significant selection of items, abstracts of contents. Phase 2, the full text digitisation of the records identified in Phase 1, will be complete by 2005. EPPI is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board.

The papers contain information on Ireland and its relations with Britain in this period: from massive social inquiries and census enumerations, through reports on economic, educational and scientific subjects, cultural and linguistic institutions and political and military developments, to transcripts of semi-literate emigrant letters.

Note: In the next issue, there will be a review of the new Irish legal service Westlaw IE.

Back to Contents.