LIMERICK CITY Council has become the first local authority in the country to put its burial registers online.

Burial records for the city’s largest cemetery, Mount Saint Lawrence, dating back more than 150 years, are now available to the public over the internet.

Limerick City Council commissioned Medrex Systems to microfilm the records and to convert them into digital format.

It is now possible to access a copy of the original handwritten entries of burials in Mount Saint Lawrence cemetery from 1855 onwards on Limerick City Council’s website.

Each entry in the record is handwritten and records the name of the person, the date of burial, the location of the grave, the age of the deceased and their last residence.

Mount Saint Lawrence was first opened in 1849 when a new graveyard was needed in Limerick as a result of the 1830s cholera epidemic and the Great Famine of 1845-1850.

“The register is a mirror to Limerick society from this time as all sections of society were buried here,” said Limerick City archivist Jacqui Hayes.

“Every person buried has a one line entry, and these persons came from every street and lane in Limerick.

“For many years the majority of entries on a single page are from the Limerick Union and Limerick Lunatic Asylum. These were later known as St Joseph’s Hospital and the City Home.”

According to Ms Hayes, the registers record the burials of many former mayors of Limerick, from Michael O’Callaghan and George Clancy, who were killed during the War of Independence, to the late Jim Kemmy TD in recent times.

The registers are also important from a demographic point of view as they provide statistics for the changing life expectancy rates and death rates.

Workshop: The Irish Guidelines for Archival Description
Seminar Room, National Library of Ireland, Kildare Street, Dublin 2
Thursday, 30 April 2009, 14.30-16.00

To mark the launch of the Irish Guidelines for Archival Description (PDF document), a workshop will be held on the afternoon of Thursday, 30 April 2009. This workshop will provide an introduction to the principles of archival description.  It will demonstrate how the individual elements of the International Standard of Archival Description, ISAD(G), have been applied in an Irish context and will discuss the conversion of older catalogues to standardised formats.

The workshop will be led by members of the SoA, Ireland Descriptive Standards Sub-committee:

·         Mary Mackey and Hazel Menton of the National Archives of Ireland, 

·         Ciara Kerrigan of the National Library of Ireland and

·         Elizabeth Mullins, School of History and Archives, University College Dublin.

While the workshop is free, registration by email is required. Please complete the booking form (MS Word document) and email the details to Noelle Grothier, the SoA, Ireland Training Officer.

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