Irish Roots Genealogy Site - Another Disastrous Waste of Money?
March 12th, 2008
I noticed this article on RTE site about a new website Irish-Roots.
The website was officially launched today on the Jeanie Johnston in Dublin by Arts Minister Séamus Brennan and Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness.
Such big names from both sides of the border, a high profile launch like this surely means the project was heavily funded. So I was interested to see how it stacked up vs Web 2.0 offerings like Geni. Suffice to say that Irish Roots is unlikely to be featured on TechCrunch any time soon.
I’ll excuse the system for being painfully slow, this could be related to a spike in traffic following the initial launch. I’ll get over the odd fact that, despite access to (allegedly) millions of records, I get 0 results when searching for “John Murphy”. I’ll forgive the awful (yet somehow award-winning) design, since you would expect this from any web project remotely related to the Irish government (just ask Eoghan.) I’ll even turn a blind eye to the domain name (a .net AND a hyphen!)
But I’m finding it difficult to overlook the blatantly obvious fact that once again, some fatcats in the Irish web industry have slurping up never-ending expenses in return for amateur work, safe in the knowledge that our beloved government will never think twice about pouring massive amounts of cash into some disastrous tech project. On the contrary, they’ll celebrate its launch with champagne and caviar. On the Jeannie Johnston, no less.
I don’t have the facts to hand, so maybe I’m way off with my assumptions and this is just a badly run private venture. I did find this (outdated) article quoting some figures, interestingly enough arguing the case that placing all of these records online to begin with is ultimately damaging our tourism. It cites a Sunday Times article from 2005:
Since 1997, the Irish government has invested 2.5 million Euro into a project known as the Irish Genealogical Project. While this project has the potential to further hurt the Irish tourism economy, it is currently behind on its digitization schedule. The Irish Genealogy Ltd., which is in charge of the project, wanted to be 90 percent finished by 2007, but “because of a lack of FAS trainees, the work has slowed to a trickle and, at current rates, it will take more than 20 years to input the 3.2 million church records outstanding.� [6] Now, Irish Genealogy Ltd. is planning on outsourcing the project, an unexpected plan considering Ireland’s reputation as a technological country, and one that will further remove economic benefits from the country (Burns, 2005).
So it has been trickling away for another few years since. God alone knows how many FÃ?S trainees have come and gone on the project, and this is what we’re left with. A disastrous website designed by BRS Systems (surely this isn’t the same BRS Systems that specialises in providing Internet based IT solutions to golf clubs across Ireland and the UK?). And not only that: the promise that whoever is milking this gargantuan cash-cow can continue to do so indefinitely.
It is free to do a general search on the site, but €5 for a more detailed search thereafter.
The Irish Family History Foundation, which runs the website, says all money goes back into making the site bigger and better.
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March 14th, 2008 at 1:46 am
For those of us on the U.S. side of the great pond, what Irish genealogy sites are among the best for researching our Irish ancestors? The project for uploading so many resources for those of us doing research online here seemed too good to be true and so, apparently, it is.
Thanks.
March 14th, 2008 at 8:09 am
I am a genealogy enthusiast and quite often dependent on church records for research. For over 10 years, I have been aware of the long slow process involved in making digitized Catholic church records available to the public. The lack of commitment to doing this, seems to be due to the churches not releasing their registers but FAS and the other bodies involved refused to move with the times and use the most modern techniques available. The argument that tourism is affected by making records online is a form of censorship. Does it aim to force people to fly to Ireland, call on various churches, libraries and other repositories, nearly all of which were not geared for this, nor did a lot of them want such visitors. So, we only wanted to help peopel who could afford to travel and who were fit and able to squint at old microfilm, trudge to various outlying parish churches in the hope of finding a welcome. Often old fashioned poor quality microfilm was the best a visitor could hope to find in our National Library or National Archives. Mind you without this microfilm, often done by the Mormons, Ireland would have provided little access to church records. The tourist often left with a bad experience of Ireland and went back to relying on genealogical message boards and help for other people researching Irish family history from a distance. I welcome the online records but I too have had problems with the clunky website. It feels like it was cobbled together in a rush. The cost of €5 (reduced rate for March) seems to step to me as you often have to search many records to find the one you want. €5 per 24 hours would seem more reasonable. Margaret Jordan
March 14th, 2008 at 11:50 am
Margaret, I agree with you in opposition to the point that deliberately keeping these records offline is a form of censorship and a bad idea. I think it is a good idea that the records are online, and regardless of how well or badly they approached this task, it is done now. 8 million records are sitting in a database on the internet. It is just disappointing that they didn’t approach a professional web development firm to build a website that looks good and actually works.
Kathryn, while I was harsh in my criticism, this is a new service so I wouldn’t give up hope just yet. The potential is huge, and surely they’ll be getting a lot of feedback like mine which will encourage them to make some key changes.
March 17th, 2008 at 19:26 pm
I agree with all the above messages. Hype over substance I’m afraid
March 19th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
The reply to my email to the IFHF regarding ny question about the possibility of making the Kerry and Cork (excluding N. Cork) records available online was as follows:
“At this time there are no plans as there is no functioning centre in Co.
Kerry and in the case of the rest of Cork there is no IFHF centre doing
those records. There is a centre in Cork City which is computerizing the
records of the deaneries of Cork.
Perhaps if we can generate some finances we will be in a position to do
something about Cork and Kerry.
Yours sincerely
IFHF”
March 19th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
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April 14th, 2008 at 3:06 am
I found your website because I was looking on the site for Donoughmore - because our family is trying to track our Irish family under “John Murphy” who left for American when he was just a toddler. We only just came accross Donoughmore - as a possible link to where he was born. So when I saw your “John Murphy”.. I just had to say hello - because we were both searching the same name… If you have a Father Cornelius and Mother Mary and Brother Andrew to go with that John you were searching for.. let me know! It’s amazing being on this side of the pond and wishing you knew where your “roots” were for sure…
The best,
April 15th, 2008 at 14:05 pm
First off I can’t think how this will actually hurt tourism. High Euro and low dollar/Sterling will hurt tourism. As someone who would want to visit my forebears, I’d like to be able to view some records online first to ensure that I’m heading to the right place. So at long last we’re getting the records online. Thanks to Canada Library, the 1901 and 1911 census’s are coming online also.
However.
You’re correct about the website… or should there be a h between the s and i in Website. I was using it at 10 Euro a records, 5 is still too much. The distribution of Irish names in 1800s is very tight so basically when one searches the information given is minimal and forces one to try a needle and haystack approach. Marriage records should return Parish, and other partners name at least. Birth/Baptism records should return Parish and Fathers name at least. Death Records should return Parish and age at least.
Finally one should be able to peform a “super search”. ie quite often its the case that one wishes to find information about siblings of great great grandparents. The ability to search for all children between a date range with Father x and mother y, and return all the records. OK perhaps this needs some thought as to pricing structure, but in the end it will be to benefit tourism.. If people feel a connection to a place they will come. The transcription of the records helps, the website obscures.
May 9th, 2008 at 17:55 pm
[...] there’s nothing we can do about it. I recently covered the black hole of funding known as Irish Roots, but it gets worse and [...]