Content description
This core collection of 620,000 pages and around 80 key journals, 210 monographs and more than 2,500 manuscript pages is available free of charge to further and higher education institutions in the UK and the Republic of Ireland, research councils in the UK, publicly funded schools, publicly funded libraries, publicly funded archives and record offices within the UK and the Republic of Ireland as part of the JISC Digitisation Programme. The project is providing online access to a comprehensive, multi–disciplinary digital library of research materials relating to Ireland, spanning the 18th century to present. Ceased rare periodicals essential to the study of Ireland’s cultural and political life can be found alongside journals publishing vital contemporary scholarship in their fields.
Researchers, students, academics and teaching staff will be able to access the digitised materials on Irish Studies via JSTOR from its Ireland Collection.
The Digital Library of Core E–Resources on Ireland draws on the Library Special Collections at Queen’s University Belfast. Queen’s Special Collections includes the large Hibernica Collection as well as holdings with particular strengths for the period 1749 to 1814 in Irish history, politics and economics, together with cultural studies and Anglo-Irish literature spanning the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.
The project was lead by The Centre for Data Digitisation and Analysis within the School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology at Queen’s. The Centre has a long history of creating key e-resources relating to Irish Studies for the scholarly community to use. Relevant resources are listed under the Complementary Resources section below.
Queen’s and JSTOR are grateful for the participation of institutions throughout the scholarly community, in particular the libraries of the following institutions for the provision of missing issues to support digitisation for the project:
Royal Irish Academy www.ria.ie: the academy for the sciences and humanities for the whole of Ireland promotes excellence in scholarship. The Academy publishes scholarly papers and represents the world of Irish learning internationally.
The Linen Hall Library www.linenhall.com: renowned for its unparalleled Irish and Local Studies Collection, ranging from comprehensive holdings of Early Belfast and Ulster printed books to the NI Political Collection, the definitive archive of the recent troubles.
The Armagh Public Library (Robinson Library) www.armaghrobinsonlibrary.org: holdings include a remarkable collection of manuscripts and monographs, including the world famous Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift, a copy of Benjamin Motte’s first edition dated 28 October 1726, with amendments and markings in Swift’s own handwriting.
Jesuit Library at Milltown Institute www.milltown-institute.ie: The Jesuit Library, one of the finest theology libraries in Ireland, is at the disposal of the Milltown Institute. Library holdings include volumes covering theology, philosophy, spirituality, scripture, Church history, Jesuit history and biography, the humanities and Irish affairs.
Key titles include:
- The Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, which date back to 1787, and the Academy’s other valuable publications Ériu, Irish Journal of Earth Sciences and Irish Studies International Affairs
- Significant portions of Queen’s University Belfast’s rare Bunting Collection, composed of melodies and Irish music collected by Edward Bunting in the early 19th century
- Irish Historical Studies, Ireland’s prominent history journal
- History Ireland and Archaeology Ireland
- Circa, a long–standing art publication
- The ISI–ranked Irish Journal of Agricultural and Food Research
- Linen Hall Review, the publication of Northern Ireland’s prominent Linen Hall Library
Main subject areas
As a multi-disciplinary collection, this resource is relevant to anyone teaching, studying and researching including agriculture, archaeology, art, biology, cultural studies, earth sciences, economics, environmental studies, history, literature, mathematics, music, politics and sociology.
Academic level
This resource is suitable for learning, teaching, and research at school, further education, undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
Date range
1701–Present
Updates
The digitisation of the material is expected to be completed in 2009, with new content being added in accordance with JSTOR’s Moving Walls of between 1 and 5 years .
Complementary resources
By participating in the other JSTOR collections, over 1000 academic journals and other scholarly resources can be accessed and discovered.
By subscribing to the 19th Century Pamphlets Collection, users can access 26,000 pamphlets that focus on the political, economic and social issues that fuelled the great Parliamentary debates and controversies of the 19th century.
By subscribing to 19th Century House of Commons Parliamentary Papers and The Burney Collection, over 300 years of newspaper history can be accessed and discovered.
By subscribing to 19th Century UK Periodicals Online, Series 1, 19th Century British Library Newspapers and The Burney Collection, users can access over 300 years of newspaper history and the birth of modern magazine publishing.
The Centre for Data Digitisation and Analysis has created a plethora of resources relevant to Irish Studies. Many of these are available online and are free of charge. Strategic relevant resources include:
- The Database of Irish Historical Statistics: The Database includes most recurrent printed census statistics for Ireland for Baronires, Poor Law Unions, County Districts and Counties from the first Irish Census in 1821 to the last in analogue form in 1971. The Census is an exceptionally rich resource and includes information not just on demography but on language, literacy, housing quality, occupations, religion and more. It is available via the History Data Service (http://hds.essex.ac.uk/history/) at Essex University.
- The Act of Union Virtual Library: The Act of Union Virtual Library is a unique collection of pamphlets, newspapers, parliamentary papers and manuscript material contemporary with the 1800 Act of Union between Ireland and Britain. The entire content is searchable bibliographically, the search results displaying individual images that can be browsed by turning the pages of each virtual book or document. A free text search is provided for the pamphlets and parliamentary papers. See www.actofunion.ac.uk
- From Partition to Direct Rule: 50 years of Northern Ireland Parliamentary Papers online: The project makes available Hansard for the North Ireland Parliament from 1922 to 1973. See http://stormontpapers.ahds.ac.uk/
Cost
Because it is funded by JISC, access to this resource is free for higher and further education institutions, research councils, publicly funded schools, publicly funded libraries, publicly funded archives and record offices within the UK and the Republic of Ireland, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Library.
Subscription
Our subscription page has instructions for subscribing to this resource.
Notes
Publicly funded libraries only:
Please note that there are special conditions under the definition of "Authorised Demonstrators" and "Authorised Users" in the Sub-Licence Agreement for publicly funded libraries. "Walk-In Use" only access is available to authorised demonstrators and authorised users until 1 April 2014, with remote access being available to authorised demonstrators and authorised users thereafter. Please see Clause 1 of the Sub-Licence Agreement for further details.
For institutions and libraries that are new to JSTOR:
If you are not a current JSTOR participant, you will also need to provide technical information about your institution by submitting a Network Verification Form (NVF), which can be found at: http://www.jstor.org/action/showNetworkVerification.
Once JSTOR has received the appropriate sub-license and Network Verification Form (new participants only), they will begin to process access for your institution. Please note that it normally requires about 7 to 14 business days to install access for new collections. Once access has been established, you will receive a welcome message from the JSTOR staff.
Functionality and standards compliance
Full text linking
JSTOR supports internal reference linking, inbound linking from linking partners, as well as outbound linking to current issues for many titles through the use of the SICI standard. For more information, please go to: www.jstor.org/page/info/resources/index.jsp
Federated searching
The JSTOR XML Gateway supports metasearching, which is also known as "federated searching" or "cross-database searching."
MARC records
JSTOR creates and enters new cataloging records or updates existing cataloging records in OCLC for each title, current or previous, in the archive. The records include the URL for each title in the 856 MARC field.
JSTOR does not have local copies of these records, and due to a July 2003 revision to the CONSER cataloging standards, it is no longer possible to download them as a group from OCLC.
Currently, the only way to locate all the cataloging records for each title in a JSTOR collection is to conduct a title-by-title search.
Metadata standards
As some of JSTOR’s participating institutions have chosen to implement a metasearch engine for their users, we recognized the need to provide both a stable, standardised method for querying the JSTOR archive and also a manner of returning results that could be easily utilized by a metasearch program. To accomplish this, we have chosen the Search and Retrieve URL (SRU) Service as the basis for the JSTOR XML Gateway.
For more information, see: www.jstor.org/page/info/resources/linking/meta.jsp
Search options
Full-text searching is available. Institutions that participate in multiple collections may search across them together.
Post-search options
JSTOR citations can be saved to a Saved Citations List for copying, printing, emailing, and direct export to bibliographic software such as EndNote, ProCite, Reference Manager, RefWorks, or spreadsheet software such as Microsoft Excel. Individual citations can be saved by clicking the Save Citation link listed below each JSTOR item displayed on the Search Results and Table of Contents pages.
Usage statistics
JSTOR is a COUNTER Member and currently provides the COUNTER JR1 report, in addition to other usage data. JSTOR is developing a new usage statistics reporting tool that will make available additional COUNTER reports as well as other new standard reports requested by librarians and publishers.
Authentication
Via the UK Access Management Federation, Athens and IP range.
Personalisation of the online resource
Users may set certain preferences to personalise their use of JSTOR.
Accessibility
It is a priority for JSTOR to ensure that their content is available and accessible to all users. In order to increase the accessibility of the articles within JSTOR, they now offer users the ability to download articles in TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) as well as PDF and PostScript formats. As a not-for-profit organisation with the mission to act as a trusted archive, JSTOR is in a unique position with regard to making content accessible. Rather than displaying the raw text for articles, JSTOR displays and delivers page images in order to provide a faithful replication of the original print journals. It is through this faithful replication in image format that JSTOR fulfill their not-for-profit mission to function as an electronic archive that can be used as a substitute for the original print material. Although JSTOR have created a full text index for search purposes, JSTOR are unable to display or deliver it to users, because while it is accurate for search purposes, it is not designed for use in connection with assistive technology.
For more information see: www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/accessibility.jsp.
Library support information