Ireland's Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac University is launching a digital database with about 1,500 articles and illustrations related to Ireland and the Great Famine.
The electronic library will feature pictorial newspaper items from the Great Hunger of 1845 to 1852 and will be available via the Ireland's Great Hunger Museum website. It's scheduled to open Tuesday.
The resource will be available to students, scholars, historians and others at no cost. The database will include illustrated newspapers and publications such as The Illustrated London News, Punch, and The Pictorial Times.
Ireland's Great Hunger Museum acquired the volumes of the pictorial newspapers from Kenny's Bookshop and Art Gallery in Galway, Ireland. Quinnipiac says scholars and others have worked on making the resource accessible to the public for over a year.
Earlier this year, WNPR's Where We Live toured the museum to learn about the history of the famine, and the art that emerged from it. In the mid-19th century, Ireland lost three million people. One million died from starvation and related diseases, and two million emigrated.
The only museum in North America dedicated to the Great Hunger, Quinnipiac officials said they have the world's largest collection of Great Hunger-related contemporary and period art.
Listen to WNPR's audio tour below:
This report includes information from The Associated Press.
