Ainm.ie: Breathing New Life into a Canonical Collection of Irish-language Biographies

In this paper we present the Ainm.ie online collection of Irish-language biographies. This collection is a product of a project to retro-digitise the Beathaisnéis series, published between 1986 and 2007, as well as ongoing biographical work to expand and enrich the collection. The Beathaisnéis series comprised biographical accounts of 1,650 lives and an additional 520 amendments and supplementary articles, written in Irish. Persons were chosen for inclusion in this series according to their relevance to the Irish-language world. This canonical collection is an invaluable research tool for Irish-language scholars, historians and others but the print volumes risked becoming obsolete and inaccessible. As well as producing a digital version of the original texts, a key aim of the Ainm.ie project has been to ensure the continuity of biographical research in Irish by providing an online platform for publication. This paper introduces the Beathaisnéis collection and explains its context. It goes on to describe the digitisation process and the editorial work carried out to enrich the digital version, as well as the motivation for this version. Finally, it discusses how the project has facilitated contemporary biographical research in Irish.