I think first and foremost you should shake off your experiences of the jazz world when you come to this. Look at Irish music and how it works at its own merit. It's a different place. Take it as you find it.
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Would a young student in Ireland be expected to have a copy of O'Neill?
Not at all. Students are not expected to own books. Most 'students' will learn young and absorb the repertoire of the musicians around them, family, peers, musicians they come into contact with. At some point some may look at books to acquire repertoire, or recordings. But students are expected to play music, have it in their head and under their fingers, not in their library.
That said, I think it would be hard to over-estimate the importance of O'Neill's collection. Especially during the last century it was a very important source of music. Stories abound of communities of musicians working their way through the book. Postman Hughdie Doohan in Kilmaley, able to read music, playing through it and the other musicians picking up what he played by ear. Or the East Galway musicians, having gone through the book desperately asking themselves what tunes they were going to learn next, which resulted in the mtaking turns at composing tunes for the group to learn (and in turn creating a lively local tradition of composing music).
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the only extant biography of O'Neill,
'A harvest saved' is not quite the only thing ever written about the Chief though. Breandan Breathnach wrote fairly extensively about him for example. Caoimhin Mac Aoidh's book on James O'Neill gives a few nice insights in the times and work methods the collection grew out of.
It is probably good to place O'Neill's works in context. More, and more extensive, collecting work has been done since. Breathnach collection is of immense value, the three volumes published in his lifetime were/are extremely influential and so are the two volumes published posthumously (with thousands and thousands of tunes collected by him not published at all).
And over the past, say, twenty five years a flood of other collections have been published that have all been influential in one way or another. There' a bit of a fashion/trend thing in that too, a lot of people seem to feel they have to be seen playing a few tunes from Goodman's, for example. But composer-collections, regional collections, single player collections, archive/manuscript collections, they all play a part these days of increased availability and easier access.
So, there's a multitude of sources (musicians always trying to find good tunes few other people have, which then snowball as soon as they are 'out'). O'Neill's works have a place in all that, among all the other stuff.