Methodist Church in Ireland Newsprint Digitisation.

The Methodist Historical Society (MHSI), as it approaches its own centenary in 2026, set a goal of providing access to a complete run of over 150 years of Irish Methodist periodicals dating from 1859 to the present.

We are delighted to announce that digitisation of the weekly Christian Advocates (1883-1923) and the Irish Christian Advocates (1924-1971) were completed during 2021 and by the end of March 2022 the earlier monthly Irish Evangelists (1859-1883) and later monthly Methodist Newsletters (1972-2015) were added to the collection. Most recently, at the beginning of October 2024, with the kind permission of the Methodist Newsletter, the years 2016-2020 have been included. These scanned and searchable issues have been uploaded and are available online through the search engine: https://esearch.informa.ie/mhsi/

This project, at an overall cost of approximately £36,500, has been made possible by initially drawing on MHSI’s own funds and through generous donations from Society members and friends. The programme received a considerable boost during 2021 when the Society was awarded a generous grant of €15,000 from the Irish Heritage Grant Scheme, for which it is most grateful. This grant has made possible the scanning of the Irish Christian Advocate (1924-1971) and the Methodist Newsletter (1973-2015) elements of the project.

In addition to the initial cost of digitization the Society pays €1,750 per year to to maintain this digitable archive online, allowing a worldwide audience to view and search it using any name, place, or other search term.

We are grateful to Dr Susan Hood of the Church of Ireland Representative Church Body Library whose shared experience of guiding the RCB Library’s digitization of the Church of Ireland Gazette has proved most valuable.