The list of of Irish-related electronic books associated with this note was compiled by staff of County Clare Library under the heading “Digital Books” [online]. As the concise account given at the head of the Clare Library pages explains, that list was compiled using the Open Library search-engine attached to the million-strong collection of electronic texts in the Internet Archive [IA], the ambitious digital project conducted by Google Books — online. The resultant listing is copied here in a format better-suited to RICORSO, without a much of the code and formatting practices associated with IA and many of the have been transported with minor alterations to the Author region of RICORSO —. E.g., “Arthur Young”[q.v.]
A Tour in Ireland, with general observations on the present state of that kingdom, made in the years 1776, 1777, and 1778 and brought down to the end of 1779, by Arthur Young, Vol. 1.
Published: 1780, Printed by G. Bonham for Whitestone [&c.] (Dublin).
Pagination: Vol. 1 of 2 vols.
Subject: Agriculture — Ireland.
Ireland — Description and travel.
Internet Archive Bibliographical Record [b&w] |
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| [ Copy held in Bodleian Library (Oxford) ] |
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A Tour in Ireland, with general observations on the present state of that kingdom, made in the years 1776, 1777, and 1778 and brought down to the end of 1779, by Arthur Young, Vol. 2.
Published: 1780, Printed by G. Bonham for Whitestone [&c.] (Dublin).
Pagination: Vol. 2 of 2 vols.
Subject: Agriculture — Ireland.
Ireland — Description and travel.
Internet Archive Bibliographical Record [colour] |
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| [ Copy held in Univ. of California, LA ] |
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The search-engine selected by the Clare Library under the title of “Open-Access Text Archive” is especially useful for those who visit the Internet Archive often and prefer to reach their target by browse through the category levels. (Irish collections is not a category in the Archive.* Nonethless, on account of a high level of digital integration via .html links between the Internet Archive and the Google Books platform, it is equally possible to reach a given text by means of an ordinary Google search — which is never to be scorned. The advantage of the Open Access search machine is that it is possible to isolate Irish books by generic name (Ireland, Irish, &c.) Other search engines may not provide the same results.
*The last blog-post at Open Access is dated 15 Dec. 2005 (Jeff Kaplin) and the main gateway now appears to be Open Library.org [online] (22.02.2024.)
Clearly many titles — older and newer — have been added to the Internet Archives since the date in 2010 when the Clare Library listing was compiled. Notwithstanding this given of the digital planet, it should be frankly acknowledged that the resource created by the Clare Library team is non-pareil for Irish-studies researchers and especially (rare breed) those who specialise in collecting digital libraries. Indeed, even the catalogue at the National Library of Ireland whose deep-level datebasing structure ("power by VuFind") permits access to digital texts, similar titles, and numerous other ‘to die for’ widgets — does not permit the longitudinal view of the available resources supplied by the Clare Library list.
For the purposes of the present listing, titles singled out by Co. Clare Library team as dealing with that county in particular have been integrated in the total listing, while several other headings created by that team have been kept in recognition of their obvious taxonomic value. This resassignment is not without casualities since, for example, several titles listed solely because they include illustrations by the Clare-born artist William Mulready have been reassigned to other categories, if of Irish interest, or else deleted as being of no concern to the Irish-studies reader at large. |