Part of a photographic archive capturing more than 50 years of development in Shannon, Co Clare is to be digitised by the University of Limerick (UL).
The college has been awarded €125,000 by global charitable foundation, the Wellcome Trust, as part of the collaborative project 'The New Jerusalems; post-war New Town archives in Britain and Ireland'.
The project aims to catalogue and conserve 11 post-war new town archival collections.
In 2014 the Shannon Development Photographic Archive was transferred to the Glucksman Library at UL.
The collection, which comprises approximately 250,000 photographic items spanning over five decades, also contains photographs of dignitaries and public figures who visited Shannon over the last half-century, including the Beatles, Mick Jagger, Muhammad Ali, Gene Kelly, Charlie Chaplin and a number of US Presidents.
The digitisation project will focus on the Shannon Town archive and it is expected that up to 36,000 photos will be digitised from that collection.
The archive provides a rich source of material on the social and industrial development of Shannon from 1959.
The photos depict the development of housing and industrial estates in Shannon and the transformation of the region from an agricultural base to an industrial centre.
Ken Bergin, Head of Special Collections and Archives at UL, said that the collection is a hugely important resource for researchers and town planners for the future.
"The collection contributes to our social history and documents not just Shannon but also 6 other Counties where Shannon Development Company was operational.
"What we have here from the 1960's is a photographic and a visual record of the social and industrial development of Shannon up to the 1980's and its official recognition.
"We have the very essence of a new town and what it took to build it."
The digitisation project will enable global access to the archive for research and cultural heritage purposes.
It is hoped that the remaining archive of over 200,000 items will also be digitised if additional funding is secured.
