Roundtable May 3rd Program Reminder

 

Just wanted to remind readers about the Roundtable’s upcoming program on Saturday, May 3.  Christopher Finan will speak about the role of noted New York Irish Americans in the struggle for free speech in the United States.  Full information is available at the earlier blog entry.

Forgotten New York

Anyone who loves New York City  history should check out the webpage for Forgotten New York.  It has wonderful pictures and descriptions of sites throughout the five boroughs.  One way to get started would be to click on search, and then enter the word Irish.  If you are planning to go to this site, make sure to set aside an hour or more, because time seems to melt away at Forgotten New York.  Enjoy!

Controversy Within Irish Government About Fees Charged by Online Genealogical Service

In an article published in The Irish Times on March 13th, 2008, it appears that there is a controversy within the Irish government about the fees that the Irish Family History Foundation is charging for access to databases containing Irish genealogical records.

Fine Gael spokeswoman for Arts, Sports and Tourism, Olivia Mitchell, stated that “The gathering and digitalisation of the parish records was done at public expense and it was always envisaged that this kind of public information should be made freely available to the public.”

To read the complete article, go to: http://www.cigo.ie/IrishTimes13March2008.html

The fees being charged for each viewed record was initially set at 10 Euros, but it was temporarily lowered to 5 Euros in order to attract attention within the genealogical community. It definitely has attracted attention, but not all of the attention has been favorable. A search of the Irish-oriented genealogical mailing lists hosted by Rootsweb reveals quite a few gripes about the services being offered by IFHF, and the total costs involved in trying to gather meaningful genealogical data from the service provider.