Course Enrollment: IR-203 Irish: Newspapers and Special Collections

This course teaches how to use printed sources for genealogy. These sources include newspapers, directories, pedigrees, family or local history journals, and records of fraternal organisations. Newspaper accounts are contemporaneous and can be more trustworthy than derivative sources created at a later date. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) has enabled commercial companies to digitise newspaper content although some old print is still unclear and unreadable.

Printed sources discussed include their formats, content, value, access challenges, location strategies, and relevant bibliographies, indexes, abstracts, and databases.

FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City, Utah, houses some source materials. Catalog numbers from their collections are referenced in this course. FamilySearch microfilm/microfiche or catalog numbers are provided when applicable.