Library Forum

I recently received the e-mail below from info@rootsireland.ie and thought that some readers of this forum might find it of interest. I will resist the temptation to make any further comment.

Paddy,
you're not alone. The same thing happened to someone on RootsChat last December
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.ph ... 870.0.html

And of course the statement from IFHF that "These unique databases have been compiled by the individual centres at their own expense" is completely inaccurate - the Irish government has spent millions through FÁS over the years in creating these databases.

What they don't seem to realise is that information is one thing you can give away - and still keep!
Regards,
Mike

Those who don't suffer from high blood pressure or borderline depression can browse the numerous Government debates ( http://www.oireachtas-debates.gov.ie ) and reports on this subject on the Goverment website. For a little taste make sure you are sitting comfortably and fasten your safety belt and fire up http://tinyurl.com/32zqrhl where you will read, among other things, with reference to the Irish Genealogy Project that "......the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism has supported the project, with funding of €2.5 million from 1998 to 2005. In addition, FÁS contributed €32.2 million in the period to 31 December 2004 through the payment of wages to staff inputting records into the databases".

There is also reference to "..........following a value-for-money report from the Comptroller and Auditor General and the project’s transfer to the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism, a full review was undertaken by an officer of the Department. That review was completed in early 1999". I won't abuse the hospitality of this Clare-oriented forum by continuing to write about this general issue but suffice it to say that if you don't yet suffer from cardiac arrhythmias the Comptroller and Auditor General's value-for-money reports* will make sure you do.

So much for "....compiled by the individual centres at their own expense".

Paddy

* Start at http://www.audgen.gov.ie/documents/vfmr ... roject.pdf and take it from there. This report alone will leave you weeping over your keyboard but there are more of them if you are masochistic and want to persist (e.g. http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/spe ... ol1Eng.pdf and http://debates.oireachtas.ie/DDebate.as ... All&Page=2 ). See also Sean Murphy's remarks at http://homepage.eircom.net/~seanjmurphy/dir/intro.htm (27-Dec-2009) where he writes "The longest running government-funded project has been the Irish Genealogical Project, which was severely criticised by the Comptroller and Auditor General in 1996 for poor management and standards and is now apparently in abeyance, its grand scheme to computerise Irish records unfinished. A rump of the project survives as the Irish Family History Foundation, which boasts a total of 16 million records online, but which it insists on doling out at a cost of €5 per individual piece of information. The Department of Arts, Sports and Tourism has surprisingly entered the fray as a genealogical player in apparent competition to the IFHF, recently releasing on free access on its Irish Genealogy website over a million Kerry and Dublin church records, with more records promised next year". And so it goes on.

Many thanks, Paddy eile, for your typically detailed research. I momentarily thought on receipt of the above e-mail yesterday that my long-held belief that I had already paid for the IFHF databases through my taxes was just a figment of my imagination. I am glad to learn that my mental faculties have not yet deteriorated to that extent.

Even if I had not helped to fund the compilation of the indexes, I would still not understand why I am expected to pay 5 euro online for a trainee's transcription of a record of which I can, in most cases, purchase a photocopy for 4 euro in the GRO. And my recollection is that 5 euro is a temporary special offer for a so-called service originally priced at 10 euro.

\pw

What keeps someone from creating another account? Seems like a cat and mouse shell game to me!

Several weeks have passed and I have now calmed down slightly and revisited http://www.rootsireland.ie/

This is after all a Clare forum, so I am surprised that there has been no mention on this thread of the absence of Clare records on the above website. It shows that there is apparently no `County Genealogy Centre' in Clare and that Clare is neither `currently available' nor `available soon'.

So how can one locate a Clare baptismal or marriage record? And how much does it cost? Or what years are available?

Were any of the vast sums of government money mentioned by the other Paddy above spent on indexing Clare records?

On http://www.rootsireland.ie/index.php?id=31 it says:
"Some counties in Ireland do not have an IFHF county genealogy centre, are not yet participating in the online service or do not offer a genealogy service at the present time. The IFHF is working towards the goal of all Irish county genealogy centres participating in the online service and also offering a full genealogy research service. Some counties which are not online at present will be joining the Online Research Service in the coming months. All counties continue to work on the computerization of further records." and it also says:
"Clare:
Co. Clare offers a commissioned research service only. For further information please contact
email: clareheritage@eircom.net".

This is the email address of the Clare Heritage & Genealogical Centre (http://www.clareroots.com/).

Antoinette O’Brien of the Clare Heritage & Genealogical Centre, Corofin, is scheduled to give a talk at the upcoming 'Genealogy Day' at the Clare Library - so maybe someone attending that could ask her why Clare records won't be available under Rootsireland. http://clarelibrary.blogspot.com/2010/0 ... ublic.html

The map on http://www.rootsireland.ie/ifhf/map.php shows that a number of other counties are not taking part in this project - including Kerry, Waterford, Wexford and Carlow.

Thanks for finding that little gem buried away on rootsireland.ie

The obvious conclusion from the main menu on all the rootsireland.ie pages would be that there is no County Heritage Centre at all for Clare.

I will be at that 'Genealogy Day' and will make sure to ask the relevant question in the unlikely event that nobody else gets in first.

Parish records for Kerry and Carlow are available free of charge from irishgenealogy.ie, so the fact that one cannot buy them at exorbitant prices from rootsireland.ie is a minor irritation compared to the total absence of Clare records (other than one or two exceptions like kilmihil.com where records have been made freely available online at parish level).