DESPITE ONLY launching officially on Wednesday, www.Logainm.ie, an online database of close to 100,000 Irish place names, logged 260,000 page views and 30,000 searches in September, without advance publicity.

The website is aimed at students, teachers, journalists, translators and researchers, who need what the site calls the "authoritative" Irish form of place names.

Developed by Fiontar, Dublin City University's Irish-medium teaching and research unit, the project was carried out on behalf of the Place Names Branch of the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs. It includes scanned archival records and sound files for pronunciation.

Fiontar has already had some success in developing such online resources with Irish terminology database Focal.ie, and used this as a base to develop the new site.

"Although it was based on the same technical infrastructure as Focal, the challenges on the new project were quite difficult. The sound aspect was new, and the materials for scanning came in all different formats," project director Dr Caoilfhionn Nic Pháidín says.

Fiontar is also exploring the possibility of mapping integration for the database.