Opportunity to Digitally Preserve your Eighth Amendment Referendum Collection
**EXTENDED DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS** Sunday 26 February 2023
Apply here.
Archiving Reproductive Health, (ARH) a project of the Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI), in partnership with Archives Ireland and Informa, are inviting applications for our Public Collection Day in Dublin City Library and Archive, Pearse St, Dublin, on 10 March 2023.
This event is part of the public outreach aspect of ARH, and intends to digitise a cross-section of personal memorabilia relating to the history of the Eighth Amendment, and of reproductive health in Ireland more generally, over the last few decades.
Like many of us, you may have a box at home where you keep memorabilia relating to significant events in your life and the history of Ireland. These physical copies are safe, but if digital versions could be created, then they could be shared much more widely. You may also have personal collections of digital photos or short videos that tell part of the story of the Eighth Amendment or related issues that you would like to donate to an archive. This is where the ARH Public Collection Day comes in!
We are looking for applications from members of the public to take part in a one-day event in Dublin on 10 March 2023. At this event, the successful applicants will bring material which will be digitised on-site by expert staff from Archives Ireland and Informa, or transferred to DRI’s servers using secure file transfer.
About our partners: Archives Ireland are an archives, records management and digitisation consultancy, and Informa are an information management company that specialise in digitisation and data security.
DRI staff will work with applicants to collect important information about the material, which we will then use for cataloguing. After the event, the digitised material will be published on DRI as part of the ARH collection, ensuring it is preserved in the long-term.
ARH will select the applicants that will be invited to the event using the following criteria:
1. Type of material
Is it an appropriate size and format for digitisation? For example, flyers, small or medium-sized posters and many kinds of merchandise can be easily photographed or scanned, but very large objects such as long banners may not be. Applicants should prepare a cross-section of not more than 15 objects – more details and examples can be found under ‘Extent of material’ below.
We are open to collecting material that is already digital such as short videos, photographs and audio files. In the case of digital material we have a preference for material you created yourself for personal use. Smaller file sizes are preferable to large ones. In the case of digital material, we would ask that applicants limit the number of proposed digital objects to 20 individual files or fewer. An example could be a downloadable folder containing 20 digital photographs taken on a camera or phone.
Note: Material in older image or audiovisual formats (such as VHS tapes) cannot be digitised at this event.
2. Provenance of material
Do you know who created the material (either individuals or an organisation)? We may accept some unprovenanced material (where we don’t know who the creator(s) are) but it is much easier to publish archived digital collections online when we know where it comes from and who made it.
3. Relevance of material
We are open to receiving material relating to any aspect of the history of the Eighth Amendment and reproductive health in Ireland. It should be noted that much of the material created by larger campaign groups is already represented in existing ARH collections.
Take a look at the collections to ensure that anything you were thinking of submitting in your application is not already represented in the existing collections. We’re especially interested in campaigning material from local/regional canvassing groups active in the 2018 referendum, as much of this material is ephemeral and subject to loss.
4. Extent of material
This event is one day only, so we will not be able to digitise large amounts of material. We would ask that applications propose a cross-section of not more than 15 individual objects (or 20 individual files in the case of digital material, or combined physical/digital material). An example cross-section could be:
- 3 different flyers
- 2 different small posters
- 4 different badges
- 2 different T-shirts
- 2 hand-painted placards
- 2 event tickets
Or, a cross-section could be individual items made up of multiple components, for example: 3 informational booklets of 5 pages each.
If you would like to include both physical and digital material in your application, please propose a cross-section of not more than 20 individual objects in total – for example: 5 different flyers, 5 different badges, 5 digital photographs and 5 short digital videos.
Applications can be completed via this short form.
The deadline for applications is Monday 20 February 2023, and successful applicants will be notified shortly after that.
If you have questions not covered by the details above, please contact ARH Project Coordinator Clare Lanigan at c.lanigan@ria.ie.
Data protection notice: The information collected in the Collection Day Application Form will be used only for the purposes of facilitating the Collection Day and subsequent archiving of digitised material, and will be securely deleted after the event. This is in line with DRI’s Data Privacy Statement and relevant data protection legislation.
