After taking a long break, to refresh the batteries and clear the mind of negative thoughts, I'm back.  The original purpose of this blog was to highlight and inform the wider public in regard to the preservation of the wonderful historical data that is present within our school system.  Sadly, while there have been a number of enquiries about what I offer, no school has been brave enough to say "Yes!, Let's do it!".  Fear would seem to be the overriding reason why no Board Of Management or school principal has been brave enough to take the last step..

Fear of what exactly?

Next post, which will be on Monday August 5th, will explain more...

This Is What We Do...

Spread The Word...

My friends tell me that my idea is good.  My wife tells me that my idea is good.  People in the heritage arena have told me that my idea is good.  So why am I getting a bit frustrated?  Because I am beginning to fee that there are also those who consider the service I am offering to be a gargantuan monumental invasion of privacy.  Tough, is all I have to say.

Listen, what I am offering is not stealing of the Crown Jewels, it is not throwing the Data Protection Act out the window;  if we do not protect sufficiently the data and images gathering dust in locked cabinets all over the school system in Ireland then the day will come, oh it will come and have no doubt about it, when all will be left in those cabinets is dust itself.  I am offering to record those Roll Books, those old photographs, the old memorabilia and safely store it all away in electronic and searchable form. 

I can only go so far in making relevant bodies aware of my existence, or rather the existence of Irish Roll Books,  hopefully somewhere there is a forward thinking soul who sees the merit of my madness. 

Volunteer School Needed!

I need a volunteer school from within the INTO structure to enable me to carry out a photographic assignment on their Historic Roll Books (books over 100 years old).  Why?  So I can use the resulting images to create a process template which will make all future assignments easier and more free-flowing.

What do I need?  I need to contact, be be contacted by, someone in authority in a National School in Ireland who is willing to let me photograph and digitally archive their Historic Roll Books.   I will carry out this task FREE OF CHARGE!  But only for the first school to offer up their Roll Books!  

Contact me on 086-3957962.

I Learned My Lessons Here...

My first day in school was many years ago, 1966.  I have a vivid recollection of who my first classmates were, I have a vivid recollection of who my teacher was, I have a vivid recollection of the type of day it was.  It was sunny in September that year.  Not everyone though has the same level of recollection as I do and Irish Roll Books could be in a position to do something about that.

Kinsalebeg National School, Co. Waterford, Ireland.

We can photograph any Roll Book from your school, we can digitise every page to make research easier, we can set up datasets to enable genealogists find what they are looking for in a shorter time frame.  We can set up a system whereby all the information in these historical books is not lost to the world.

Irish Roll Books are offering this service to schools to help them understand the heritage content they have in their locked filing cabinets.   The data contained in historical roll books can be of huge benefit to researchers, genealogists, historians.

Contact Irish Roll Books now on 086-3957962 or by email at gomahony1@gmail.com

The Concept. The Idea. The Service.

For those of us schooled in the Irish National School system the ever present Roll Book is a constant reminder of who we went to school with, when we went to school and who were our teachers.  The information within these books is like finding a gold seam seam to a prospector working in the genealogy or family history area.  It can yield connections to the people of the past, to the schooldays and memories of the researcher’s childhood and point them in the right direction to make more discoveries.  But in many cases, more often than not really, the schools themselves are unwilling or unable to provide the information due to Data Protection issues.  Now the Data Protection Act is a fine instrument on the whole and it needs to be in place to prevent data theft and unauthorized use of information.  But it could be put to such good use by people simply looking to do some research on their ancestors…

According to my sources any Roll Book in an Irish school that is over 100 years old at the time of enquiry is free to browse and garner information from; though some schools would still seem to be unaware of this and are still refusing requests from genuine genealogists and researchers.  There are a number of reasons for this.  The schools are afraid of what a researcher might see, they are worried that someone will remove a page from the book (it has happened in some cases), and the final reason would seem to be that they, the Boards of Management of the schools, simply feel that as ‘guardians’ of the information they must at all costs keep it under lock and key.  Shame.

Here at Irish Roll Books we have the solution; photograph the historical ones,  ie 100 years old or more.  The data is protected, the images from each roll book are easily viewable on any monitor, the information can be extracted from the pages that are photographed and used as datasets for historians going forward, the schools could possibly even make a few euros here and there from sales of images of the pages that are photographed.  All sound good?

Irish Roll Books can carry out this service for a reasonable cost to your school.  Get in touch now at 086-3957962.