Reference for History

Irish History

This is a brief guide to material at BC providing reference (dictionaries, encyclopedia, biographies, bibliographies, indices, and more) on historical topics.

Reference Shelf

This page provides access points to BC's subscriptions to reference material on Irish history. Here, you can find resources for finding definitions (e.g., dictionaries); suggested scholarly material (e.g., bibliographies); as well as background material and explanations written by experts in their fields (e.g., encyclopedia and handbooks).

What's on This Page

This page has a lot on it. You can use the following anchors (links down the page) to jump straight to a relevant box.

Find Definitions

Corpus Stairiuil na Gaeilge 1600 - 1926
This online corpus makes 19 million words of Irish, from over 3000 printed texts, freely available to read and search.
Dictionary and Language Library
The aim of the site is to provide users of the language with free, easy-to-use access to dictionaries and to grammatical and pronunciation information relating to words in the Irish language.
focal.ie
Gateway to electronic resources for the Irish language. Selected categories include folklore, surname, biographical, and place name resources.
An Foclóir Beag
Irish language dictionary (Irish only).
Gaeilge ar an Ghréasán
Links to web resources, in and about Irish Gaelic.
National Terminology Database for Irish
Developed by Fiontar agus Scoil na Gaeilge, DCU in collaboration with An Coiste Téarmaíochta, Foras na Gaeilge.

Find Scholarly Sources

Bibliography of British and Irish History This link opens in a new window
Provides bibliographic data on historical writing that deals with the British Isles, the British Empire and Commonwealth, the Republic of Ireland, and the Irish in America.

Irish History Online
Irish History Online is a guide to what has been written about Irish history from earliest times to the present. It currently contains approximately 70,000 bibliographic records (December 2009) and is a work in progress and is hosted by the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin.

Older Material

A Guide to Irish Bibliographical Material: a Bibliography of Irish Bibliographies and Sources of Information by Alan R. Eager
Call Number: O'Neill Library: Ref. Z2031.E16 1980; Burns Library: Z2031.E16 1980 IRISH and Z2031.E16 1980 REF
Publication Date: 1980
An index of published Irish bibliographies, including catalogs, bibliographies printed in Ireland, periodicals, and indexes. Includes a subject and author index.
A Guide to Irish Fiction, 1650-1900 by Rolf Loeber and Magda Loeber
Call Number: O'Neill Library: Reference PR8706 .L64 2006; Burns Library: PR8706 .L64 2006 IRISH
Publication Date: 2006
Provides thousands of summaries of Irish fiction published in Ireland, England, North America, Australia, and Europe. Includes previously unknown and forgotten authors.
A National Library of Ireland database for Irish research
Call Number: National Library of Ireland
Publication Date: Ongoing
Contains over 180,000 catalogue records for Irish manuscripts, and for articles in Irish periodicals.
Whitaker's Books in Print
Call Number: O'Neill Library: Ref. Desk Z2001.R33 (current ed.); Burns Library: Z2001.R33 REF
Publication Date: c1988-
(Formerly known as British Books in Print.) A listing of books published each year in the United Kingdom. Includes bibliographic citations, and an author and title index.

Corpus of Electronic Texts
Ireland's longest running Humanities Computing project. It has a searchable online text base consisting of over 19 million words, in 1638 contemporary and historical documents from many areas, including literature, medicine, and the other arts.
British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries
This collection includes the immediate experiences of approximately 500 women, as revealed in over 100,000 pages of diaries and letters. Particular care has been taken to index this material so that it can be searched more thoroughly than ever before. The collection now includes primary materials spanning more than 300 years.

Catalogues and Indices

Boston College Libraries Online Catalog
Cross-disciplinary searching of hundreds of millions of online and locally-available resources including print books, e-books, journal articles, and digital collections.

English Short Title Catalogue This link opens in a new window
The British Library is experiencing a major technology outage following a cyber-attack affecting their website, online systems and services, and some onsite services. 12/19/2023

The English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) provides extensive descriptions and holdings information for items of all types published in Great Britain and its dependencies in any language from the beginnings of print through the 18th century -- as well as for materials printed in English anywhere else in the world. The database includes materials ranging from Shakespeare and Greek New Testaments to anonymous ballads, broadsides, songs, advertisements and other ephemera. The ESTC serves as a comprehensive bibliography of the hand-press era and as a census of surviving copies.
WorldCat (Firstsearch) This link opens in a new window
Search for books, journals, audio, video, and other print and digital materials from the collections of the BC Libraries and thousands more libraries around the world. This version offers more robust searching than WorldCat Discovery.

Find Biographical Information (Who's Who)

Cambridge Dictionary of Irish Biography This link opens in a new window
The Dictionary of Irish Biography is a collaborative project between Cambridge University Press and the Royal Irish Academy and includes articles that describe persons in all fields, including politics, law, religion, literature, journalism, architecture, painting, music, the stage, science, medicine, engineering, entertainment. and sport.

General

American National Biography This link opens in a new window
Scholarly biographical articles with short bibliographies on deceased notable Americans.
Biography and Genealogy Master Index This link opens in a new window
Indexes current, readily available reference sources, as well as the most important retrospective works that cover individuals, living and deceased, from every field of activity and from all areas of the world.
Biography in Context This link opens in a new window
Biographical information on thousands of people throughout history and from around the world.

Literary

Contemporary Writers (British Council)
Contains up-to-date profiles of some of the UK, Commonwealth and Republic of Ireland's most important living writers. Included are biographies, bibliographies, critical reviews, prize information and photographs. Profiles are searchable by author, genre, nationality, publisher and book title.

Literature Resource Center This link opens in a new window
Literature Resource Center provides access to biographies, bibliographies, and critical analyses of authors (novelists, poets, essayists, journalists, and other writers) from every age and literary discipline.
Something about the Author This link opens in a new window
Something About the Author includes personal data, addresses, career, awards and honors, writings, sidelights (essay on the author's life and works), adaptations, additional sources and more. Also includes autobiography essays from Something About the Author Autobiography Series.

Find Background Information

The include encyclopedia (short-ish entries) as well as handbooks and companions (full chapters or book on specific topics).

Encyclopedia of Irish History and Culture by James S. Donnelly
Call Number: O'Neill 3rd Floor Reference DA912 .E53 2004
Publication Date: 2004-07-01
Written for a broad audience of students, academics, and general readers. It spans prehistoric times to the present, and examines both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland in detail.
Encyclopedia of Irish Spirituality by Lionel Rothkrug; Phyllis G. Jestice
Call Number: O'Neill / TML
ISBN: 1576071464
Publication Date: 2000
Celebrates the amazing links among Ireland's religious traditions over the ages. Despite the present-day tensions between Catholic and Protestant, the main characteristic of Irish religion has always been accommodation.
Ireland and the Americas by James P. Byrnes; Philip Coleman; Jason King (eds)
Call Number: O'Neill E18.75 .I74 2008
ISBN: 1851096140
Publication Date: 2008
This work is a distinctive, multidisciplinary encyclopedia covering the cultural, political, economic, musical, and literary impact that Ireland and the nations of the Americas have had on one another since the time of Brendan the Navigator.
The Lore of Ireland: An encyclopaedia of myth, legend and romance by Dáithí Ó Hógáin
Call Number: O'Neill GR153.5 .O156 2006
Publication Date: 2006
Ireland has one of the finest cultural heritages and a standard reference book combining the related subjects of folklore, myth, legend and romance is long overdue. There are 350 substantial entries, in alphabetical order from Abán, a 6th-century saint, to Weather, all with full references to sources, a synopsis of relevant stories, and discussion of their origin, nature and development.

Handbook and Companions

The Cambridge Companion to Modern Irish Culture by Joe Cleary (ed.)
Call Number: Cambridge Core
Publication Date: 2005
Includes chapters and bibliographies on a variety of topics.
The Oxford Companion to Irish History by S. J. Connolly
Call Number: Oxford Reference Premium Collection
Publication Date: 2007
In a field that has long been at the epicentre of political and academic debate, The Oxford Companion to Irish History offers a comprehensive and authoritative guide to all aspects of this fascinating and complex land.

Broader Searches

Cambridge Companions Online This link opens in a new window
Cambridge Collections Online offers subject or theme based collections of content. At present, there are two collections comprising the Cambridge Companions in Literature and Classics and the Cambridge Companions in Philosophy, Religion and Culture. Each collection is updated with new Companions on publication and are cross-searchable.

Irish State Administration Database
This resource provides a dataset capturing the establishment, growth and evolution of Ireland's state administration from the foundation of the Irish Free State in 1922 to the present. The database records information about all national-level public organizations, including central Government departments and the agencies under their aegis, commercial state-owned enterprises and other relevant public bodies and institutions.

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Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies

Reference for History

Irish History

Reference Shelf

What's on This Page

Find Definitions

Find Scholarly Sources

Older Material

Catalogues and Indices

Find Biographical Information (Who's Who)

Recommended

General

Literary

Find Background Information

Handbook and Companions

Broader Searches