The Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI) is delighted to announce that the all-Ireland research project, OS200: Digitally Re-Mapping Ireland’s Ordnance Survey Heritage, has joined DRI as our fortieth member.
The Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI) is delighted to announce that the all-Ireland research project, OS200: Digitally Re-Mapping Ireland’s Ordnance Survey Heritage, has joined DRI as our fortieth member. OS200 is a collaboration between Queen’s University Belfast and the University of Limerick and involves partners including the Royal Irish Academy and Public Record Office of Northern Ireland. The aim of the project is to produce a digital corpus of textual and visual materials belonging to the early Ordnance Survey (OS) in Ireland, from the 1820s to 1840s, including memoirs, maps, letters, drawings, and name books, making these searchable and publicly available in time for the bicentenary of the OS in Ireland in 2024. DRI is playing a crucial role in the design and delivery of this ambitious and important digital humanities research programme, joining forces with the Centre for Data Digitisation and Analysis based at Queen’s University Belfast.
On joining DRI, OS200 Co-PI Dr Catherine Porter said:
All of us in the OS200 project team welcome our membership of the Digital Repository Ireland. Through the Repository, we will meet one of the project’s main goals in making the histories of the Ordnance Survey available to academic and public audiences. We are really pleased to have the expertise and support of DRI to help us on this journey and look forward to sharing ideas and building new relationships with DRI staff and DRI’s networks.
DRI Director Natalie Harrower added:
We are delighted to be partnering with OS200 to help them achieve their project aims. We have supported the project through its application phase and were delighted it was successful, as it will build such a rich, multi-faceted, and engaging resource for researchers and the public. Membership in DRI will ensure the outputs of the project are preserved and shared openly according to best practices in open research, and this in turn will ensure that the Ordnance Survey of Ireland is better understood for generations of researchers to come.
OS200 will enrich our understanding and appreciation of the impact the Ordnance Survey had on the island, its landscapes, and peoples, two hundred years ago. As well as digital legacies, the project will be working with local communities on exhibitions and publications. The final year of the project, in 2024, will be marked by the launch of the OS200 digital platform, being developed through collaboration with DRI, a critical player in this collaborative venture. Sharing the heritage of the OS in Ireland through digital access and assuring sustainability of the digital resources resulting from OS200, are really important both to the project team as well as DRI. OS200 can be followed on Twitter and DRI provides regular updates on collection publications on our Twitter page. You can also follow us on Instagram to uncover more treasures in the Repository.
Visit our membership page to learn more about DRI membership opportunities.