The 1641 Depositions

Abstract

This paper reviews the digital edition of the 1641 Depositions, a collection of witness accounts related to the Irish rebellion of 1641. An invaluable source for the cultural, social and religious history of Ireland, this collaborative effort of Trinity College Dublin, the University of Aberdeen and the University of Cambridge provides 19,010 pages of original documents online in digital form, alongside valuable background and context information. Despite the significance of the material and the commendable effort at making it available to the public as an online edition, the project suffers from a number of technical failures and design flaws. The most significant flaw, however, is the lacking re-usability of the online material for further research due to the restrictive copyright policy and the unavailability of the TEI-encoded transcription files.

Keywords

• irish history
• religious history
• social history
• transcription
• witness accounts