Harriet Wheelock / Thursday 18 November 2010 Irish Virtual Research Library and Archive Last week saw the launch by University College Dublin of the second phase of the Irish Virtual Research Library and Archive. The IVRLA is a digital humanities and social science repository, which aims to make some of the extensive, rare and unique archive and research material at UCD available in a digital format. The digitised material on the site is divided into thirty-two Collections, which represent a sample of the archival, library and folklore collections held at UCD. In addition there are also seventeen Research Projects. While the Collections make material available in a digital form, the Research Projects aim to show the research potential of the IVRLA digitised collections, the potential of the IVRLA to preserve material or to act as access point for material not previously catalogued. The IVRLA contains a huge body of material, which will be relevant to researchers in many different fields. Although material in many of the Collections and Research Project will be of use to research in the field of the history of medicine, there are a number of projects which are very important for this field; Index to the Dublin Journal of Medical Science – This Research Project has created an index of the contents of the Dublin Journal of Medical Science from its foundation in 1832 to the year 1949. The Dublin Journal is Ireland's longest running medical journal and is of huge importance to the history of medicine. Unlike previous indexes this project not only details the main articles but all pieces no matter how small, these include reports of hospitals, reviews of recent medical works and discoveries, obituaries of Irish medical men, special reports and occasional advertisements. The indexes are downloadable in the form of six excel spreadsheets covering the six series of the journal. These indexes contain the details of the volumes, title of each entry, author(s) names, page references and notes on illustrations. The Library here holds a complete run of the Dublin Journal from its foundation in 1832. As with all material in Dun's Library, these are available by appointment Monday to Friday from 10am to 1pm and 2pm to 5pm. Similar to the Dublin Journal project is the Index to the Irish Builder and Engineer which provides an index to the editions of this periodical published between 1890 and 1914. Other projects of interest include the project to Reconstruct the Library of the Royal College of Science, and social history projects looking at the Irish Famine and emigration to America. All the material on the site, with the exception of three Questionnaire Collections from the National Folklore Archive, are accessible through the IVRLA site, the site also hosts an e-journal which contains research reports and technical working papers produced as part of the project.