Limerick Council is unique among the counties in Ireland in having an enormous collection of fantastic local history resources made freely available to all.
Limerick has paved the way with this under the banner of three main sections of the local government, Limerick Library Local Studies Section, Limerick Museum, and Limerick Archives. Who between them have put hundreds of thousands of records online for everyone to browse at their leisure.
The first collection comes from the Limerick Library Local Studies section, it contains records such as Trade Directories, Obituaries, Historical Journals, Registers of Electors and much much more.
The physical Local Studies Section is based in Limerick Library, The Granary, Michael Street, Limerick.
You can keep up to date on their projects by following their facebook page Limerick Library
Next we have the Limerick Museum, who have put their entire catalogue online, this means you can see the tens of thousands of items that belong to the citizens of Limerick (most of which are in storage at the moment). The items in the collection span from the stone-age right up to today, it is a treasure trove of Limerick’s forgotten past.
The Museum also have a collection of Research Aids and Historical Essays. The physical museum its based at the Franciscan Friary, Henry Street.
The Limerick Museum social media pages you can follow them on Twitter, and Facebook.
Finally there is the Limerick Archives, this is the most complex of the three as it has been involved in collaborative projects which has seen it’s collections fragmented onto different sites. Firstly we have their Digital Collection, which holds both Private (Business/Schools) and Public (Government) papers from such as the early CBS school records, Register of Successful Vaccines, Bedford Row Lying-in hospital records, First car registers and much much more.
Secondly they have their Cemetery Records which are split into three parts Original Burial Registers, which cover Mount Saint Lawrence, the MSL extension, an Mount Saint Olivers. Then they have the Transcribed Burial Register for Mount Saint Lawrence, which makes searching 70,000 name a whole lot easier, finally they have the Grave Marker Transcription for Mount Saint Lawrence, here they have remapped the entire old cemetery, photographed each headstone and are in the process of transcribing each one. Along with this they have a series of Historical Talks on Burial Practices in this collection.
They also created the Limerick Leader 1970s Photographic Archive, where once again thousands of images, this time of 1970s Limerick have been made available for free.
You can follow them on facebook and twitter.
We should be very proud of the staff in each of these departments for the foresight in knowing that the digital archive is incredibly important and for making these records available so easily for us all.
Explore these wonderful collections and learn something new about Limerick City.
