Our witnesses: A shared newspaper heritage

The work of understanding history — or the work of trying to understand history — has never been easier. 

Online access, often free, to archives, museums, military records, and even census results means that anyone with an interest in how today grew from yesterday can easily, very easily compared to the challenges facing historians of earlier times, get to grips with their subject.

Newspapers are often described as the first draft of history and those first impressions are part of the heritage of this country.

Online access to that heritage is being made easier by a national media project, the Irish Newspaper Archives. This archive contains 6m pages from various newspapers and spans four centuries.

From today, the content of this paper from its foundation in 1841 to 1949 is available at irishexaminer.com/archive. The rest of our archives will be digitalised before the spring.

The past may resonate loudly during this decade of centenaries and this resource will help us all understand it better. It will also help us judge it through the eyes of those who witnessed history being made.