A Chairde/ Dear Friends, Today is the centenary of the death on 7 January 1914 of Patrick Weston Joyce (1827–1914), the Co Limerick educationalist, popular historian and writer on Irish placenames, and one of the great collectors of Irish traditional music.

To mark the occasion, and to make Joyce's published and unpublished work on Irish music freely available and better known, the Irish Traditional Music Archive launches today the PW Joyce Irish Music Microsite here.

This new online microsite, part of the ITMA website www.itma.ie, currently contains

• Copies in facsimile of all Joyce’s published music and song collections, 1873–1909;

• Interactive music scores for audio playback and printing of the 969 melodies they contain;

• Copies in facsimile, with interactive music scores, of 182 Limerick melodies Joyce contributed in the 1850s to the Dublin collector George Petrie;
• Copies of the substantial manuscripts on which Joyce was working at the time of his death, which have been copied courtesy of the National Library of Ireland for facsimile publication on this microsite.

Further sections will be added to the microsite at intervals during the course of this Joyce centenary year of 2014.

Best wishes,

The Staff of the Irish Traditional Music Archive / Taisce Cheol Dúchais Éireann