Wednesday 2 April 2014

E-resource trial to 26th April 2014 - Irish Newspapers Archive

Access on archive.irishnewsarchive.com or through the Electronic Resources Trials page.

“Irish Newspaper Archives is the largest Digital Archive of Irish Newspapers in the world, with over 40 titles from all over the country, providing access to millions of newspaper articles spanning over 300 years of Irish history.”

It consists of digitised Irish news publications from 1738 onwards. It currently includes: the Freeman's Journal, Irish Independent, Sunday Independent, Irish Farmers Journal and some other regional newspapers. Further digitisation of these titles and the addition of new titles is ongoing.
  • You can choose to explore by title, keyword, or time period.
  • Search text articles, pictures, or adverts. 
Here's an example of what can be discovered - a book review from the Irish Independent, Tuesday 9th May 1939.  The reviewer certainly doesn't seem to have been able to get their head around James Joyce...


"WHASIDABOWT? Mr. Joyce's Puzzle.
Finnegans Wake. By James Joyce (London: Faber and Faber. 25s.).  
This is a book to which the author, we are told, devoted sixteen years of labour. It makes 628 pages. Here is the opening paragraph (and remember, don't blame it on the printers): 
rivenim, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, bringing us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. 
Here is another passage taken at random in the middle of the book: 
Ah, dearo dearo dear! Bozun braceth brythe hwen gooses gandered gamen. Mahazar ag Dod! It was so scalding sorry for all the whole twice four of us, with their familar, making the toten, and so on.  
And here are the last words in the book: 
Us then Finn, again! Take. Bussoftlhee, mememormee! Till thousendsthee. , Pis. The keys to. Given! A way a lone a last a loved a long the 
And thus it ends. It is all like that. At first I thought it was early Anglo-Saxon in simplified spelling. I could not understand what this weird thing was all about from beginning to end.
- T. L."


If you have any feedback, please contact acastaff@aber.ac.uk

No comments: