Harriet Wheelock / Wednesday 28 April 2010 Irish Archives Resource With increasing numbers of archival catalogues being made available on line, a number of archival portal sites have been developed to allow researchers to search a number of repositories in one go. In 2006 the Heritage Council commissioned a feasibility study on the establishment of an online portal website which would allow researchers to search finding aids for archival repositories across the island of Ireland. The pilot portal project, Irish Archive Resource (IAR), covering four repositories in Cork and Waterford, is now online. The site allows users to keyword search collection level descriptions of the participating archives holdings. It's really encouraging to see this type of development in the Irish archive sector, which has often been slow to engage with the opportunities offered by new technologies. IAR are now looking to expand the pilot project by allowing as many archive repositories in Ireland to submit collection level descriptions. This is certainly something we plan to do with the Royal College of Physicians' archive collections, as soon as they are fully catalogued. For smaller, lesser know repositories, portal sites can be especially valuable in raising general awareness of collections, and in our case showing that our collections are not just of interest to medical historians but are of much wider social, political and genealogical interest.