FROM St Patrick to Ian Paisley, almost 1,000 life stories from nearly 1,500 years of history will be totally free to access by anyone anywhere in the world from March 17th on the Royal Irish Academy's new dictionary of Irish biography website.
The former DUP leader's new biography will go live on the website on St Patrick's day, which tells the island’s life story through the biographies, at home and overseas, of prominent men and women and "noteworthy Irish careers of those born outside Ireland".
It was first published in nine volumes in 2009 by Cambridge University Press, along with a paywalled digital version hosted and maintained by the publisher.
The DIB is the most comprehensive and authoritative biographical reference work for Ireland, with a further two volumes in 2018, as well as several hundred of new entries being added online.
From St Patrick's Day it is moving to an `open access' model making its entire corpus freely available to all users for the first time
Extending chronologically from the earliest times to the twenty-first century, the living are not included.
Biographies range in length from 200 to 15,000 words, covering diverse figures across a broad range of human activity from scientists to sports people, suffragists to soldiers.
The earliest person in the dictionary is St Patrick - the first of 353 Patricks - with new entries Ian Paisley, Garret Fitzgerald, Christine Buckley and Dermot Healy added to coincide with the launch.
Also included are musicians George F. Handel, Phil Lynott, Stephen Gately and Rory Gallagher, with authors Bram Stoker and Sheridan Le Fanu as well as pioneering computer programmer Kay McNulty, furniture designer Eileen Gray and novelist Maria Edgeworth.
The impact on Ireland of Cromwell, Churchill. Balfour and Peel is also covered.
