There is an interesting article in the Boston Globe today, August 29, 2006. The full article can be found at: http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/08/29/online_map_archive_an_irish_genealogists_pot_of_gold/ It begins with: Online map archive: An Irish genealogist's pot of gold By Raja Mishra, Globe Staff | August 29, 2006 Ireland's past will come to life tomorrow when the Irish government plans to unveil an online map archive with details of every town, street, and farm on the Emerald Isle dating back nearly 200 years -- an unprecedented achievement expected to be a treasure trove for those tracing their Irish ancestry. For 5 euros a day, roughly $6.40, computer users can access visual images of more than 30,000 maps of Irish localities dating back to 1824, a database cobbled together from the vast archival holdings of the government and universities in Ireland. Users can search the database by zooming in on maps, or using key terms, to pinpoint where their relatives once lived, eliminating often fruitless searches in Ireland's aging paper archives, which are spread out among several facilities and often consume time that could be spent visiting ancestral hometowns. The article also notes: The first public demonstration of the project will occur at a reception tomorrow evening in downtown Boston at the outset of a four-day genealogy conference. Free demonstrations will occur at the Hynes Veterans Convention Center during the run of the conference, which ends Saturday. The survey team painstakingly scanned the maps, most of them in storage at Trinity College, the National Library of Ireland, and the Royal Irish Academy, all in Dublin. The maps span two eras, from 1824 to 1847, and from 1888 to 1913.