Browse Research Projects

As well as the core collections, we have built a research collection around each of our 16 research strands. These research strands act as demonstrator projects for the potential of the IVRLA web resource.

The impetus for some of these research strands has come from the material digitised as part of the core IVRLA projects. Others, having seen the potential of the IVRLA to preserve rare material into the future, have digitised further material that will be a significant resource for scholars. Still others have created catalogues of books, journals, speeches, and other writings (held both in UCD and elsewhere) that will allow scholars to locate and access material which had not previously been catalogued or which had been only partially or inconsistently catalogued.

The research collections include scans of original texts, photographs and audio files as well as comprehensive catalogues, lists and research documents. All of the research strands, whether they seek to collect or catalogue older material or whether they seek to record contemporary culture in Ireland today, offer the potential for scholars and the wider community to understand our past, our present and the gateways between them.

Our education project specifically uses the IVRLA model and procedures as a teaching example for digital humanities postgraduate students and also utilises IVRLA content as a teaching and research resource.

Access any of the collections or the education project by clicking on the project titles or images below.

Reconstructing Irish Science: The Library Of The Royal College Of Science (1867-1926)
The late-Victorian and Edwardian era constituted a golden age for science in Ireland with distinguished scholars such as Sir Robert Kane, Fr Nicholas ...

Dublin Journal of Medical and Chemical Science Catalogue
The scope of this project is to create a complete catalogue of the Dublin Journal of Medical and Chemical Science from its creation in 1832 up to the...

Material Culture of the Mendicant Orders in Ireland Pre-1829
The project on the material culture of the mendicant orders in Ireland undertaken by the UCD Mícheál Ó Cléirigh Institute aims to create a full invent...

Austin Clarke at the Poetry Ireland Library
The Poetry Ireland Library, which is housed at UCD Special Collections, is a gathering of more than 5,000 volumes, most of which were once part of Cla...

Irish Women Writers of Children’s Literature 1870-1940
The project focuses on Irish women writers of children’s fiction between 1870 and 1940 utilising collections in University College Dublin and the Nati...

Folklore Schools 1937-38
The aim of this project was to begin to catalogue, index, and conserve the primary school copybooks entrusted to the National Folklore Collection unde...

Folklore School Games
The project seeks to build on the earlier work of the Irish Folklore Commission in collecting the Schools’ Survey in 1937-38. As this project was nece...

Folk Music
This project’s aim is to digitise the first year of the song collection of Tom Munnelly in order to make the material more easily accessible and to pr...

Georgian Dublin: Architecture and the Built Environment
The School of Art History and Cultural Policy has, over a period of more than thirty years, developed an extensive collection of slides devoted to Iri...

Joyce’s Dublin
The aim of this project was to gather together contextual material in relation to James Joyce’s short story "The Dead" in order to offer additional un...

Irish Builder and Engineer Catalogue
The Irish Builder and Engineer commenced publication in 1859 (as The Dublin Builder) and survived under various titles until 1979. It was essentially ...

Changing Ireland: Cultural Heritage & Migration
Drawing on materials represented in the IVRLA digital archive this project explores how our understanding of what constitutes cultural heritage and th...

Irish Famine
This project continues the work done under the National Famine Commemoration Project, which was established at the end of 1995 and began operation the...

Towards 2016
The aim of this project was to survey University College Dublin’s holdings of material relating to the 1916 Rising and to digitise a selection of this...

Speeches of Seán Lemass as Taoiseach
The culmination of Seán Lemass’s long political career was his appointment as Taoiseach and Fianna Fáil party leader in 1959, succeeding Eamon de Vale...

Ireland Life-Writing
The Ireland Life-Writing Archive was launched by the UCD School of English, Drama and Film in June 2006 and received UCD seed funding. Professor Andre...

Postgraduate Education
The aim of the Education Project is to enhance the links between the IVRLA and the teaching and research activities of the College of Arts and Celtic ...