The Associational Culture in Ireland (ACI) project at NUI Maynooth explores the culture of Irish associational life from 1750 to 1940, not merely from the point of view of who, what, where and when, but also to examine the ?hidden culture of social networking that operated behind many clubs and societies throughout the period. Recently commissioned government research on civic engagement and active citizenship in Ireland has highlighted the paucity of data available for establishing ?trends in volunteering, civic participation, voting and social contact in Ireland (Taskforce on Active Citizenship, Background Working Paper, 2007, p. 2). The same research has also confi rmed the importance in Ireland of informal social networking compared to many other economically developed countries (Report of the Taskforce on Active Citizenship, 2007). The objective of the ACI project is to provide a resource to enable scholars of Irish social and political life to reconstruct and highlight the role that the wider informal community information fi eld played in the public sphere in Ireland from the mid-eighteenth century. The project will also provide long-term quantitative digital data on associational culture in Ireland which is compatible with sophisticated statistical analysis, thereby enabling researchers to overcome one of the hindrances of modern-day purpose based social surveys: the short timeframe of data currently available.

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