The Digital Repository of Ireland project aimed to preserve Ireland's digital cultural identity by ingesting collections related to the 1912-1922 Irish centenaries. They issued an open call for relevant digitized collections and worked with three winners to prepare the collections for the repository. The project highlighted major resourcing issues for Irish archives and a need for more training, especially in digital preservation and metadata standards. Next steps include making digitization equipment available and providing additional training to stakeholders.

1. Dr. Sharon Webb, Sussex Humanities Lab, University of Sussex (former DRI
Requirements Analyst and Knowledge Transfer
Manager DAH)
Rebecca Grant, Digital Repository of Ireland (Digital Archivist)
Preserving Ireland’s Digital Cultural
Identity Towards 2116
DH2016
14 July 2016

2. The Digital Repository of Ireland is a Trusted Digital
Repository for Humanities and Social Sciences Data in
Ireland, launched in 2015.
The DRI links together and preserves
both historical and contemporary data held by Irish
organisations, providing a central internet access
point and digital preservation services
http://repository.dri.ie

3. DPASSH2015: Shaping our Legacy:
Safeguarding the Social and Cultural Record

4. The Irish Decade of Centenaries
Commemorating the period 1912-1922 and a series of historic
events which contributed to the formation of the Irish and
Northern Irish states.
Programme of events, projects, exhibitions, performances over
the period, particularly focusing on 1916/2016
But how will the centenary be
remembered in 2116?
DOI:10.7486/DRI.x346fc49b

5. The Decade of Centenaries Project: Motivations
Highlight fragility of contemporary digital collections
Outreach and education for our stakeholder
organisations
Testing the guidance and workflows developed for
our newly launched Repository
Provide digital preservation services for relevant collections
Community engagement - interact with new content holders and
partners

6. What did we do?
Open call for relevant collections – “An eligible collection must
either be partially or fully digitised and described, and must
contribute to the national narrative on the period under
consideration (1912-22).”
Three winners worked with DRI Digital Archivists to prepare
collections for ingestion – requirements analysis and support.

7. What did we do?
Collections featured on the DRI homepage and
launched at the DPASSH conference
Training on archival arrangement
Digital Preservation Workshop (for winners and
applicants)

8. Findings
Major resourcing issues in Irish archives – lack of funding, staff, training,
technical infrastructure.
Resourcing issues led to a bias in content that was submitted – archives had
relevant content that wasn’t digitised or catalogued yet, so we couldn’t work
with them.
Awareness of digital preservation, but most organisations sought digitisation
services.
Although ISAD(G) descriptions were available, they couldn’t be exported to
EAD (and therefore shared)
Validated DRI workflows and documentation

9. Next steps and future work
IRC-Funded digitisation suite available for loan to organisations
wishing to digitise (including XML editor for metadata creation)
Additional training needed for our stakeholder community – digital
preservation and ISAD(G)/EAD in particular
Some other initiatives are also tackling this challenge, eg. the National
Library of Ireland’s Remembering 1916, Recording 2016 project

10. @dri_ireland
@beck_grant
@wsharon145
r.grant@ria.ie
sharon.webb@sussex.ac.uk
http://repository.dri.ie
We acknowledge the support of the Irish Research Council's New Foundations Programme.