Early Irish Glossaries Project

Project start date: 2006-07 Project end date: 2009-07
An important resource for our understanding of the literary and cultural environment of medieval Ireland is a series of three inter-related early Irish glossaries, known as Sanas Cormaic ‘Cormac’s Glossary’, O’Mulconry’s Glossary, and Dúil Dromma Cetta ‘the Collection of Druim Cett’. They each consist of alphabetically listed (first letter only) headwords followed by an entry which can range from a single word explanation, often an explanation of the headword, to a whole narrative running to several pages. In addition to the Database of all the entries, the Early Irish Glossaries Project (EIGP) will produce the first critical editions of these texts.
Subject domains: 
Era(s): 
Country/region(s): 
Methods usedCategory
2d Scanning and photographyData capture
Accessibility analysisStrategy and project management
Resource sharingCommunication and collaboration
CollatingData analysis
IndexingData analysis
Content analysisData analysis
DocumentationStrategy and project management
Text encoding - descriptiveData structuring and enhancement
Text encoding - presentationalData structuring and enhancement
PrototypingStrategy and project management
Text recognitionData capture
Textual interaction (asynchronous)Communication and collaboration
Textual interaction (synchronous)Communication and collaboration
Usability analysisStrategy and project management
Web browser scriptingData publishing and dissemination
Statistical analysisData analysis
textContent types
historyDiscipline
Funding sources: 
Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
Content types created: 
Text
Software tools used: 
MySQL, PHP
Source material used:  
The early Irish glossaries Sanas Cormaic (Cormac’s Glossary), O’Mulconry’s Glossary and Dúil Dromma Cetta (the Collection of Druim Cett), as well as the shorter texts Loman and Irsan.
Digital resource created:  
The work is facilitated by and supplemented with an Early Irish Glossaries Database (EIGD), a powerful and flexible tool for searching and analysing the texts. The database currently contains headwords for each manuscript version of these glossaries, and allows you to list headwords, search for occurrences of words, and generate concordance tables of different versions. The database is supplemented by a Bibliography and a list of Abbreviations to allow access to the available printed versions of the glossaries. It will be expanded to include the full text of all manuscript versions, as well as links to manuscript images and other supplementary information.
Access to digital resource:  
Open Access
Data Formats created: 
MySQL, Extensible Markup Language (XML) TEI-compliant

Institutions affiliated with this project: 

UK HE institutions involved:
University of Cambridge

Project staff and expertise: 

Principal staff member:Dr Paul Russell
Other staff:Postdoctoral researcher(s) / Research assistant(s)
External expertise:


Metadata on this arts-humanities.net record
Author(s) of recordPaul Russell
TitleEarly Irish Glossaries Project
Record created2008-03-13
Record updated2010-06-30 18:34
URL of recordhttp://www.arts-humanities.net/node/2290
Citation of recordPaul Russell: Early Irish Glossaries Project.
<http://www.arts-humanities.net/node/2290>
created: 2008-03-13, last updated 2010-06-30 18:34