Teachers, students and users of public libraries will be able to avail of free access to a fully searchable Irish Times digital archive dating back to 1859 within the next two years, under a joint initiative announced yesterday.
Minister for the Environment and Heritage Dick Roche said that the "Times of Our Lives" archive digitisation project would "bring history to life".
He added: "As the paper of national record, The Irish Times archive is a rich resource. When the project is complete. . . we will be able to search for any location, for example our place of birth, or where we live, and all articles and photographs about it will be listed. We can then select an article, read it and print it."
The project forms part of the wider " Changing Libraries" initiative launched last year, providing internet access to a variety of important national content sources for free public use in libraries, he added.
The €1 million initiative, which is being jointly funded by The Irish Times Ltd and Mr Roche's department, with the co-operation of the Library Council, An Comhairle Leabharlanna, will see the digitisation of the newspaper's entire microfilm archive from 1859. The first edition of The Irish Times was published on Tuesday, March 29th, 1859.
When completed by late 2007, the material will be fully searchable online in every public library, primary and second-level school.
It will also be available via the ireland.com website.
Maeve Donovan, managing director of The Irish Times Ltd, said the project was an example of the "extraordinary potential" of computer technology to serve the needs of education and research.
Annette Kelly, assistant director of An Comhairle Leabharlanna, described the material as the "most important source of content in relation to the history of Ireland for schools and the general public".