The digitised files available via the Irish Virtual Research Library and Archive (IVRLA) will support research but also allow a unique level of access to the material that would not otherwise be available.
"It goes back to the issue of added value," states IVRLA project manager, John McDonough. "It allows the user to do things with the material that you couldn't do with the original."
As example he cites a map that will become available over the Archive, John Rocque's Map of Dublin. The French royal cartographer produced the map in 1756 and Bernard Scale updated it in 1773. It was one of a series that included highly detailed maps of London, Rome and Paris.
Each of these cities were surveyed and then drawn in the one scale so that differences in size would immediately become apparent, says McDonough. UCD has one of a number of copies of the Dublin map in its collection.
"It was one of the most detailed maps done of the city. It is very, very detailed and there are illustrations of buildings such as Collins Barracks. You can actually see how small Dublin was in the 18th century."
For example a great deal of what is now inner city Dublin was only fields in 1773. The map shows existing field boundaries as they were at the time.
The original map is about 200cm by 280cm and has been scanned in eight sections to improve access to the detail available on the map.
A remote researcher sitting in front of a browser will now be able to study this map in very fine detail using free software that can be uploaded from the IVRLA. "It is known as Djvu, an image file format technology," says McDonough.
The software provides a range of features for studying the map and other archived documents. The user can zoom in or pan across the document, use an in-built optical character reader to copy text straight into a document or search for a word or phrase.
It has a built in ruler so that text or images can be measured and there are other viewing options.
"It is a highly compressed file so it is easy to transmit over the internet, even over dial-up lines," he explains. "This facilitates the whole research agenda. It enables more interaction with the scanned document."
There are other important period maps in the UCD collection, for example Fraser's map of Dublin completed in 1860. This shows views of the city's growing suburbs.
These same capabilities will become available for all of the documents and images retained in the archive.
It will provide a new level of research capability, he believes.