The Scriptorium
Irish scribes copied books so that knowledge would survive and travel. The Scriptorium carries on that work in our own way: open data and an MCP server for Ireland, built from verified sources.
A long habit of passing things on
- From about the 4th century
Ogham
Counted strokes cut along a line: Ireland’s first way of writing information down.
- 6th to 9th centuries
The scriptoria
Monks copied and annotated books, then carried them to monasteries from Iona to Bobbio. Many survive because someone took the trouble to make them portable.
- Down the centuries
The seanchaí
Lore, genealogy and story, kept by heart and passed on aloud from one generation to the next.
- 1849 to 1864
George Boole in Cork
Born in England, Boole became the first professor of mathematics at Queen’s College Cork. His Laws of Thought (1854) set out the logic that every digital circuit still runs on.
- Now
The Scriptorium
The same job, with today’s tools.
How it works
The Scriptorium gathers trusted sources about Ireland into one place and makes them available two ways:
An open API for apps, websites and classroom projects.
An MCP server that AI assistants, such as Claude, can connect to. Ask about a townland, a surname or a census year, and the answer comes back with its source attached.
What it will offer
| Tool | What it gives you | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Find a place | A townland or town, its Irish name, what the name means, and where it is | Logainm, the Placenames Database of Ireland |
| Population history | How many people lived in a place or county, census by census | Central Statistics Office |
| Surname origins | Where a surname comes from, its variants and the counties it is tied to | Gaois Surnames Index |
| Find a dataset | Official government datasets on any topic | data.gov.ie |
| Trace your roots | Direct links into the census and civil records for a surname and place | National Archives and irishgenealogy.ie (linked, never copied) |
| The archive | Snáithe’s own Unwritten Rules, eras, myths and phrases | Snáithe |
In development. The first tools will use Central Statistics Office figures and the national open data portal.
Our rules
Every answer is cited. Each result names its source, its licence and the date it was retrieved.
We respect every source. Where a collection offers no API, we link to it rather than copy it.
It only reads. The Scriptorium looks things up; it never changes anything.
It’s open. Our own content is shared under CC BY 4.0.
Who it’s for
Schools building a project on their parish. Families tracing a great-grandmother to a townland. Researchers who want census figures with clear provenance. Developers making something new from something old.
It draws on the work of the Central Statistics Office, Logainm, the Gaois research group, data.gov.ie, the National Archives and irishgenealogy.ie.