Mapping Clare Online

Clare People Weekender, Friday, 6th April 2007

By Shane Murphy

UP to 50 historical maps dating back to the early 1700s have been made available online by Clare County Library via www.clarelibrary.ie. The David Rumsey Historical Map Collection features the first maps to make reference to the West Clare Railway while others provide information on historic landmarks and tribal settlements. The Library service said that the extensive online collection, dating from 1736 to 1922, would support personal and academic users in their learning, teaching and research of historical issues relating to Clare.

“Clare County Library decided to make these maps available on its website so that pupils, students and the interested reader could see just how differently County Clare was represented in these atlases over time and by various publishers throughout Europe”, stated Anthony Edwards, Executive Librarian, Clare County Library. He continued, “All references to County Clare in the Rumsey collection have been isolated and copied so as to make them more accessible to users of www.clarelibrary.ie. When the maps were added to the site, I wrote to David Rumsey giving him the links on our site and thanking him for his generosity in allowing us to use his maps.”

David Rumsey’s reply was typical of his approach to sharing knowledge and information. In response to Clare County Library’s expression of gratitude, Mr. Rumsey complimented the Library service for its use of his maps. He added, “It inspires me to keep building when people like you can make such creative reuse of the materials.”

To give a broader picture of the source for each of these county maps, another set of the David Rumsey Maps has been published on the library website using full pages from the individual atlases. Using a combination of technologies, Anthony Edwards and Jackie Dermody, Senior Library Assistant, have installed image compression software enabling web users to quickly move around and zoom in on areas of the maps and to copy and save them for future non-commercial use offline.

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