A Visitor's Guide to Dublin in 1811
Published on 29th August 2011
Dublin City Public Libraries plans to digitise some of its early books and manuscripts, in order to bring the history of the city before a wider public. Many of the proposed works are hard to find and are very expensive to buy. The Picture of Dublin 1811 is the first in the series and it is being used as a pilot project to assess the value of the project to the public. Methods of digitisation, optical character recognition (OCR), accessibility and cost are being assessed before launching the full project.
The book was chosen because it is one of the first tourist guides to Dublin, is not widely available in research libraries, and rarely comes on the market. It is illustrated with engraved plates and it has two folding maps, so it provides a challenge for digitisation. Interest in the content is likely to be high as it paints a picture of Dublin shortly after the Union with Great Britain (1800). It describes some of the Dublin’s newest buildings and monuments, such as the Custom House, designed by James Gandon, and costing a whopping £255,000 for building and furnishing, and Nelson’s Pillar, begun in 1808 and funded by public subscription.
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