This event will share the remarkable story of An Gaodhal, the world’s first Irish-language newspaper. Established in Brooklyn in 1881, the monthly bilingual newspaper was, according to historian Maureen Murphy, “the most significant development in encouraging the language movement in America, and had an almost equal impact on Ireland.” An Gaodhal was edited and printed by an Irish immigrant, Michael J. Logan (1836-1899) from Galway, in his own home in Brooklyn. Logan himself came to be regarded as the father of the Irish-language movement in America, being appointed Secretary of the Gaelic League of America shortly before his untimely death in 1899. Dr. Nicholas Wolf of NYU Libraries and Dr. Deirdre Ní Chonghaile, Associate Research Scholar at NYU, will introduce their project to create a digital edition of An Gaodhal, which includes training artificial intelligence to render the old Gaelic script machine-readable with the aim of making the new digital edition fully searchable.
This project is supported by funds from the Robert David Lyon Gardiner Foundation, the Irish Institute of New York, Glucksman Ireland House, and the University of Galway.
