A very important part of Irish heritage is now easily accessible. There is no need for special visits to the library, and no need to obtain a reader's ticket. Instead, the documents are there for all to see online...

There are two initial points to bear in mind: due to the rushed nature of the library's action (in response to a pre-emptive strike by the Joyce scholar Danis Rose) the photographs of the manuscripts are in low-resolution PDF form. The quality, it must be said, is not great, so that Joyce's hand, especially in the Ulysses manuscripts, is difficult to decipher (not to mention that, in the case of the notes, they are often crossed through in thick crayon).

The library has promised that the manuscripts will be available in "very high-resolution formats" from June 16th next, and has also declared that it is "developing new image-viewing software which will ensure that online images of the James Joyce manuscripts can be researched in minute detail by NLI website visitors".

The other issue is that the manuscripts have been placed online in a very raw state, without any real context or annotation, let alone transcription. There is no reason why all this should not follow in due course.