Dublin City Databases

The three new databases launched online
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Three new databases have been added to Dublin City's online collection. The databases were formally launched at a function in the Dublin City Library and Archive in Pearse St. last evening (26/8/2015).

Brendan Teeling, Deputy City Librarian

The function was kicked off by the effervescent Brendan Teeling, Dublin City's Deputy Librarian. He set the context and promptly handed over to John Grenham who introduced us to the first database.

John Grenham, Genealogist

This was effectively an extension to work John had been doing over the last few years on digitising the city's electoral registers. The first phase covered the period 1938 to 1963. That digitised database had been available in the library itself for a few years but it has recently come on line.

I have made extensive use of it in my family history research. It proved a particularly useful complement to the long series of Thom's Street Directories. You could find someone's address on a birth, death or marriage cert, and chase them up in Thoms. But if they then changed house you were lost. Once the electoral register was digitised you could easily pick them up again along with supplementary information on family members.

However this database only covered the period 1938 to 1964. The new database covers the period 1908 to 1915 and it is a very useful complement to the 1901 and 1911 Censuses of Population which are already online. John took us through some of its more arcane features.

I could never understand, for instance, why Theodore Brewster's son was paying him rent for staying in the family home. Theodore was not short the penny or two and son Richard could simply have handed up some of his earnings, as we all did, without turning it into a formal rent payment. What I had not realised, and what John explained, was that a lodger qualified for a vote in municipal elections so Theodore and Richard contrived to have a two vote rather than a one vote household. Useful when you're trying to influence the local council.

Ellen Murphy, Senior Archivist

Ellen took us through the process that led to the digisation and release online of the indexes to the Dublin City Council minutes. This may seem a small thing to some if you still have to consult the hard copy versions of the actual minutes.

I can vouch for it that it is an invaluable improvement from a researcher's point of view. The library had noticed lots of researchers coming in day after day ploughing through the indexes trying to find relevant items which they then had to look up in the main volumes. Now the indexes can be searched digitally, from home if necessary, and precious library time can be devoted to a very focused search of the actual minutes.

I've been there and done that the hard way and this database is a godsend for anyone who needs to consult the minutes.

Mary Clarke, City Archivist

The city is blessed with having Mary Clarke as its archivist.

At this session she explained how a number of different and inaccessible record collections had been "translated" and digitised into one general directory covering the period 1607 to 1746.

She told us that with the advent of wider literacy the demand for Secretaries was set to fall until the existing Secretaries devised a sort of shorthand which only they could read and so kept their jobs as gatekeepers of the records.

She also drew our attention to some of the water supply accounts of the period where those falling into serious arrears in paying for their water were simply cut off.

John McDonough, Director, National Archives of Ireland

John McDonough gave us an example of inter-institutional cooperation when he revealed that there were gaps in the electoral registers held by the library and that these had been filled by the National Archives providing digitised copies of the missing volumes to complete the library's online database.

John very much made the point that the various institutions involved in keeping and providing access to archives were all in the same business of serving the same public. And the thing is that it is not business from the public's end as all these digitised online databases are provided to users free of charge at the point of use.

Councillor Vincent Jackson
Chair of Dublin City Council’s Commemorations Committee

Councillor Vincent Jackson formally launched the databases but not before eulogising, and rightly so, the city's library services.

The libraries are an integral part of a valuable and much needed and underrated social sub-structure and the miracle is that not only have they managed to continue providing their services free at the point of use, they have succeeded in vastly expanding these services over the years.

In this particular case they have been helped by funding from the Council's Commemorations Committee. It's nice to see something positive coming out of 1916.

You can find the Council's databases at this page. You can either search across the full set of databases with a simple search which will tell you how many relevant entries come up in each data base and you can then go straight in and look at these. Or you can do an advanced search (ie specifying more search variables) on each database individually. There is enough stuff there to keep you occupied until you eventually take your rightful place in the graveyards database.

The Council have also put up a special page on their site covering the launch and the databases.

Dumb Terminal

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This is a database. It was the most common kind of database for decades, if not hundreds of years. It is called a card index.

Each card records a source, a quote, an idea or just some plain information. They are filed alphabetically and can readily be retrieved. The images above show my initial database for my local history researches in the early 1970s. Clearly that particular one filled up pretty fast.

When the thing started to be mechanised, the whole area of databases and modelling made a quantum leap forward. The computer could do some amazing things with your data. But first you had to get it into the computer. This was done by filling out data sheets and these were sent off to be converted into punched cards. There was one card for each row of data on the sheet.

Fortunately the punched coding was also typed along the top of the card and could be checked. And, boy, did it need to be checked, meticulously. A real pain in the ass. But you had to be accurate or when you returned the "checked cards", the slightest error would throw the whole thing out of kilter and then you would have to find the problem, assuming you realised there was a problem, correct it, and resubmit the whole job.

This stuff could take weeks of physical to-ing and fro-ing. But it was cutting edge in its day.

Then came the "dumb terminal", which was an enormous advance. You could key in the stuff directly. But directly to what. This was definitely not a stand alone computer and it had zilch processing power. It was just plain dumb. What you typed in was fed to a mainframe, or mini, computer via a landline and if you messed up and put the mainframe into a loop, you were toast.

I lost count of the number of apologetic calls my local IT section had to make to HQ to get them to unloop me, and God knows how many others who got dragged into the loop.

Then came the home computers with a certain amount of limited processing power. There was the BBC Acorn, particularly for schools, and the Commodore 64, and Clive Sinclair brought us the ZX. This was as dense as your average black hole. The box was small, every key had at least three functions and there was no screen.

Well there was, and clearly had to be, but the ZX used an ordinary television for a display, and there were plenty of those already around in homes all over the country. The original ZX had a capacity of 16KB. That was the onboard capacity of the moon-landers. Today it would barely get you a full stop in Microsoft Word.

Nevertheless it brought home computing to the masses. There was even a specific version of Sinclair Basic adapted to the cause. I remember programming Xs & Os (or noughts and crosses or whatever) and even Eliza, though the lack of capacity probably got in the way of the latter passing the Turing Test.

Nowadays we all have computers, and we browse the web and mail each other. We even carry around what once would have been a whole building in our mobile phones.

I just thought today's young people, who take so much modern technology for granted, might like to get a feel for what it was like to be at the cutting edge of deprecation.

If you're still interested, you can catch up on a few stories from my cyber-past here.

Lending Library

What is a library?

It's a place where you get books out on loan and where you can consult a lot of general reference works. It is also a reading room where you can sit and read their books or even bring your own.

At least that's how it used to be.



Today your local library is so much more. Quite apart from automating book loans by (almost) replacing friendly and efficient staff with intelligent machines (see above), the library has become a much wider community facility and focal point.


This is a current view inside my local library, the second busiest in the city of Dublin. You can see the desk, which still does a brisk business despite the intelligent machines at the door. You can also see one of the exhibitions which turn up regularly throughout the year. This particular one displays some of the really excellent photography of members of the Sutton Camera Club. Other exhibitions cover the work of local artists and aspects of local history, and there are yet other, more general, Dublin based exhibitions which travel around the city's libraries.


The study space is a new feature. This gives students a chance to study uninterrupted in a quiet environment away from home. The library provides free Wifi to all its clients. There is another space in a secluded corner which hosts language classes and conversation groups. The children's spacious area is also requisitioned on some evenings for illustrated talks on a wide range of subjects. These are very popular and well attended.


And if you don't have access to the internet at home, for one reason or another, the local library is your only man. You can book hourly slots on one of the four open computers. This not only allows you to access the internet generally, but you also have free access to a number of databases which would cost you at home, such as the Irish Times digital archive and the Irish Newspaper Archive which covers the Independent and Freeman's Journal at national level and is steadily increasing its coverage of the provincial papers.


The children's area has been reorganised from the old days when the emphasis was simply on taking out books. As you can see from the photo above, the emphasis is now on space, allowing plenty of room for both reading and joint project work.


There are even outdoor facilities. This chess/draughts bench sits in the middle of the front lawn and provides good healthy open air brain stimulation to players of all ages.


Not to forget the clothes (charity) and bottle (recycling) banks.

I was mulling over this post, and had raised it with my local librarian when, coincidentally, the Irish Independent carried an article on how to save money by using your library. It's well worth a read.

I intended the post to draw people's attention to the significantly enhanced role of the local library in today's world, not only to provoke its use but to sound a warning note. Library services are provided free at the point of use but they incur a significant resource cost and can be a tempting target for public expenditure cutbacks or charges.

A greater appreciation of this wonderful service and its universal availability will hopefully encourage people to defend it agains such depredations.


By the way, the library carpark is most definitely not a place to park your car while you go to the gym, do your shopping or raid the hole in the wall across the road. The car parking is to facilitate the public using all the other facilities provided by the library.

Update: Raheny Library celebrated its 40th anniversary on 5/12/2012.