Historical, rare publications housed in Trinity College Dublin will soon be widely available on CD.
Large parts of the college's older collection of books, journals, and historical directories will be published on CD in a collaboration between the university and a new company Archive CD Books Ireland.
Archive CD Books Ireland is part of a world-wide project to make rare books and publications in available in digital format. The company began digitising major Irish national and county directories held in the College library in January.
So far 25 historical directories are available on CD priced from €19.90. A further 150 directories will be available by 2006.
Once on CD, records, books and directories will be fully searchable on computer and will become a major new tool for professional, amateur and academic researchers.
Trinity College Library is the largest library in Ireland and one of the largest in Europe. Founded in 1592, it is both an Irish and a British copyright library, and consequently houses the majority of works published regarding Ireland and Irish history.
The company intends to extend its range to historic collections held by other libraries and repositories.
An important benefit of the project will be the preservation of many important printed historical documents. Archive CD Books will co-operate with libraries and archives to create preservation images of their holdings, thus safeguarding them for future generations.
Commenting on the development, the Librarian of Trinity College Mr Robin Adams said: "We are excited by this project as it will improve access to our unique collection of historic books for researchers not only in Ireland but also throughout the world."
"It also has major significance for the preservation of the collection, as the College receives copies of all the digitised versions, meaning our readers have less reason to use the originals. The process being used also causes no damage to the original books."
"By making the books searchable it will greatly enhance the type of research possible on this material and we expect it will be a welcome resource for the scholarly community," he added.