| Clare County Library | Library
News and Developments |
| Clare County Library represented in Chamber Ireland’s Excellence in Local Government Awards 2007 Irish Library News, November 2007 Clare County Library will be represented in Chamber Ireland’s Excellence in Local Government Awards 2007. For the second year running Clare County Library projects have been shortlisted in this prestigious competition. The awards were established to acknowledge and encourage best practice and constructive initiatives by local authorities and to enhance positive relationships between chambers, businesses and their respective local authorities. The overall winners will be announced at a special function in Dublin on November 8. The awards ceremony will take place in association with the Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Government. The two projects shortlisted for Clare County Library are a photographic project and a maps project. The photographic project is entitled Foto and was launched in August 2004. Foto is the online image database made available through the library's website at http://foto.clarelibrary.ie/fotoweb/. To date, it contains over 8,000 images and Clare library plans to continue sourcing and adding suitable photographic collections. The collections date from the beginning of the 20th century and cover topics like archaeology, architecture, railways, landscape, flora, postcards, mortuary cards, gravestones and people. The second project shortlisted is a maps
project called Historical Maps of County Clare. It is available online
at http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclare/maps/index.htm.
It began in July 2004 when the library decided to build an Internet Geographical
Information System for the users of Clare County Library's website, based
on the 1842 Ordnance Survey 6-Inch maps of County Clare. The maps were
integrated with other online resources available on the website. In August
2006 the Clare Grand Jury Maps (1787) and Petty Maps (1658-9 & 1685)
were added, and in February 2007 the David Rumsey maps of Clare were included.
The aim is to provide free and unlimited access to a digital map collection
comprising a variety of historical County Clare maps, integrated with
the wealth of historical and archeological data on the library website.
These projects are managed by Maureen Comber and Anthony Edwards. |