CIGO announces that The Irish Times is to be the second recipient of its Award for Excellence in Genealogy
At the 2008 AGM CIGO announced that The Irish Times would be the recipient of its Award for Excellence in Genealogy in 2008 in recognition of the creation of its Internet-based database of scanned images of all editions of the newspaper back to its beginning in 1859. On being informed on the Award Irish Times editor, Ms. Geraldine Kennedy, said:
“We are very honoured to be the recipient of the 2008 award for Excellence in Genealogy and for the recognition of The Irish Times’ digital archive. The database has allowed access to The Irish Times archive in a way never before envisaged or previously possible. Being able to search the entire database through a keyword search has obviously made it much easier for genealogists to locate references to individuals and places. In the past, family history has mostly been gleaned from searches of the births, deaths & marriages columns for approximate dates, but now with OCR one can instantly extend such searches back to when the newspaper began in 1859.”