OS200 with the Royal Irish Academy
One of the collections held by the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) Library is the Ordnance Survey of Ireland Archive. The Ordnance Survey (OS) was established in 1824 to survey the island of Ireland by townland and map the whole country at a scale of six inches to one mile. During the survey, antiquarians were deployed to document townland and place names, and to gather information about the built and cultural heritage of each county. The RIA collection includes the OS Maps, Letters, Memoirs, Extracts, and Sketches. This is a fascinating collection with a wealth of information about pre-Famine Ireland, and the subject of the ongoing OS200 project.
As a part of OS200, the RIA contracted Eneclann to digitise 1,600 sketches and drawings spread amongst text on the manuscript pages. Later, Eneclann was also asked to digitise and transcribe the O’Flanagan typescript OS letter volumes.
Eneclann digitised the drawings onsite at the RIA with our mobile setup over the course of a week. The drawings were captured both in the context of the full page and also zoomed into the individual sketches. Outputs were 600 dpi master TIFFs and surrogate JPGS. The 42 volumes of letters were digitised in the office studio. The outputs were 400 dpi master TIFFs and 42 PDFs. We transcribed the volumes using ABBY FineReader and Transkribus, to be used in further research.
Funded by the Irish Research Council (IRC) and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), OS200 is supported by the University of Limerick, Queen’s University Belfast, Royal Irish Academy, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, National Library Ireland, Digital Repository of Ireland, National Library of Scotland, Ordnance Survey Northern Ireland (Land and Property Services), and Tailte Éireann (previously Ordnance Survey Ireland).
Details about OS200 can be found here: https://www.irelandmapped.ie/
More information about the RIA Ordnance Survey Archive: https://www.ria.ie/collections/archival-collections/ordnance-survey-of-ireland-archive/