About Us

What Does DRI Do?

The Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI) is a CoreTrustSeal-certified trustworthy digital repository, or online archive, for the preservation of Ireland’s humanities, cultural heritage, and social sciences digital data for long-term access and discovery.

DRI provides a unique service as the only national infrastructure in Ireland with an exclusive digital preservation remit. Digital content is fragile, meaning that our shared digital cultural heritage is at risk of being lost without digital preservation, described as the ‘active management of digital content over time to ensure its ongoing access’ (Library of Congress). DRI works to safeguard Ireland’s digital legacy for future generations. 

DRI provides reliable, long-term, sustained digital preservation and access to social and cultural digital data generated by researchers in Ireland, held by Irish institutions, or digital material pertaining to the island of Ireland. We make this data openly available in line with the FAIR data principles of findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability. Our aim is to preserve Ireland’s social, cultural, and historical record to ensure that this content remains accessible to researchers, cultural heritage enthusiasts, and members of the public now and in the future. We support best practice in digital preservation, open access, open research, and FAIR data sharing. Please see our statements on FAIR Principles and TRUST Principles for more information.

When you explore or search the Repository, you are entering a world of rich content that reflects and shapes a broad portrait of Ireland.

Who Are DRI’s Members?

DRI operates on a paid membership model. We provide stewardship of digital data from a range of organisations including higher education institutions, cultural heritage institutions (the GLAM sector of galleries, libraries, archives, and museums), government agencies, and local authorities. 

DRI values a diversity of datasets and also offers free membership and digital preservation training and support to underfunded community-based organisations as part of the e-Government Award-winning DRI Community Archive Scheme.

How Does DRI Support Research?

In addition to our core DRI programme, DRI is a research-performing organisation (RPO) engaged in a rich range of collaborative digital preservation-related research projects. Examples of partner projects include ‘OS200: A Digital Archive of Ireland’s Ordnance Survey’; the Digital Preservation Award-winning ‘Digital Preservation of Reproductive Health Resources: Archiving the 8th’ (Archiving Reproductive Health); ‘Amplifying Change: A History of the Atlantic Philanthropies on the Island of Ireland’; and a variety of European-funded projects run in collaboration with Europeana and the Research Data Alliance.  Find out more about these research projects on our Projects page. News and Events will point you to current initiatives and offerings.

DRI supports the principles of open research. As of 2022, DRI is the coordinating body for the National Open Research Forum (NORF). DRI coordinates NORF’s efforts to drive the national agenda for open research, including developing and supporting actions to strengthen, promote, and better support national objectives for open research  as outlined in the National Framework on the Transition to an Open Research Environment (2019) and the National Action Plan for Open Research 2022-2030. 

Since 2022, NORF, with the support of DRI, has operated and administered a NORF Open Research Fund which allocates funding to deliver actions prioritised in the National Action Plan for Open Research.

DRI is committed to supporting the digital preservation and research data management needs of the Irish research community. In 2024, we extended our services by launching a Legacy Data Preservation Pilot, in collaboration with Sonraí, the Irish Data Stewardship Network, to support those researchers who cannot deposit in DRI through traditional routes. Through this pilot project, researchers can preserve their research data for long-term access and discovery.

Mission and Vision

Mission

The DRI is a trustworthy digital repository for the preservation, stewardship, and dissemination of Ireland’s humanities and social sciences research data and cultural heritage collections. 

Vision

The DRI ensures that digital preservation is a core consideration for national organisations working with born-digital and digitised cultural heritage collections, and research data. We do this by working to increase awareness of good practices and policies, and by using our Repository to preserve the collections and data of our depositors.

The DRI develops policy, is a significant contributor to European policy on Open Science, and is an internationally recognised leader in digital archiving and repository infrastructure.

Who Are DRI’s Funders?

DRI is funded by the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (DFHERIS) via the Higher Education Authority (HEA).

DRI Strategy 

In 2024, DRI launched our first Strategic Plan so that we can outline our vision for the future, set organisational goals, and ensure that we have the resources in place to meet the growing digital preservation needs of the Irish higher education and cultural heritage sectors that we serve. The DRI Strategic Plan 2025–2029 outlines our strategic goals in the priority areas of Digital Preservation; Innovation and Infrastructure; Education and Engagement; Open Access and Research; and Membership and Community. Access the Strategy in the DRI repository. We have also published an Irish language version of the Strategy in the Repository.

Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Policy

As a national repository, the DRI’s collections, membership, partnerships and staff should reflect Ireland’s society and culture in all of its breadth and variety. You can find a short version of our Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion policy, which contains the core EDI values that we work to, in the Repository. You can also find a long version with our actions and implementation for 2023-2025.

Code of Ethics

The Code of Ethics for the Digital Repository of Ireland outlines DRI’s code of ethics in relation to the protection of deposited objects, objectivity with social responsibility, continued development, national policy and shared research, the FAIR data principles, privacy, communication, and equality.

DRI Management and Governance

DRI Board 

The DRI Board fosters the long-term success of the DRI through encouraging the highest standard of corporate governance and accountability, providing guidance to the DRI Director on the strategic direction of the Repository with a view to the DRI’s long-term sustainability, and monitoring progress towards strategic goals and key performance indicators. Read the DRI Board Terms of Reference (June 2018) to find out more.

DRI Management Team

DRI’s Management Team (MT) is the day-to-day management mechanism for DRI, providing technical advice to the Director on key operational decisions, and operating as a second stage of review for key new policies and initiatives developed by DRI Team members or recommended by DRI Task Forces. The DRI Management Team is composed of senior representatives from DRI’s three partner institutions (RIA, TCD, MU) and meets monthly or more frequently as necessary.

Task Forces

DRI operates a number of standing task forces that are constituted by DRI staff members, and members of the wider community, in order to focus work in particular areas, track the evolution of best practice, and organise operational tasks. Standing task forces include: Legal, Ethical, and Organisational; Digital Object Management; Repository Platform; Business Records; Communications; and Website Development.

Specific-purpose Task and Finish Groups manage time-limited projects and initiatives.

Expert Advisory Group

The Expert Advisory Group (EAG) is a forum for DRI staff to draw on national and international expertise in a range of disciplines and sectors including the repositories and archives, cultural heritage, research and education, humanities and social sciences, legal, technical and creative domains. The EAG convenes yearly and provides ad-hoc advice on key topics.

Members’ Day

DRI is strongly connected to its designated community and regularly incorporates feedback into planning and features development. In 2025, we will host an in-person Members’ Day event where DRI members can showcase their work, discuss requirements, provide feedback, and network with peers on topics of relevance to digital archiving and preservation. 

From 2020, DRI has hosted a monthly online format as part of our DRI Virtual Coffee Morning series. The DRI Virtual Coffee Mornings are a place for DRI’s staff and members to come together and discuss digital preservation topics, challenges, or projects in a relaxed environment. We endeavour to have at least one of these coffee mornings in-person per year.

History

DRI was originally funded through a PRTLI (Programme for Research in Third-Level Institutions) Cycle 5 funding grant. In this phase (2011-2015), DRI was built through extensive research into archival and repository best practice, and through continuous  consultations with stakeholders across Ireland. The PRTLI 5 grant brought together a research consortium of six academic partners and over 40 staff to deliver the repository design and architecture, policies, guidelines, and training programmes. Throughout this period, DRI offered an active programme of outreach which included organising conferences, delivering academic papers, and participating widely in national and international networks of expertise. The founding  consortium partners are: Royal Irish Academy (RIA, lead institute), Maynooth University (MU), Trinity College Dublin (TCD), Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) (now Technological University [TU] Dublin), National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG) (now University of Galway), and National College of Art and Design (NCAD).

DRI was officially launched in June 2015, and continues to be managed by three core academic institutions – RIA, TCD, and MU. DRI team members are based at each of these institutions. The DRI team combines academic and professional expertise across a range of disciplines and profiles, including software engineers, systems architects, archivists, humanities and social sciences scholars, educators, and information professionals.

After launching as a live Repository in 2015, DRI was funded by the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (DFHERIS) via the Higher Education Authority (HEA) and the Irish Research Council (IRC). From 2025, DRI is solely funded by DFHERIS via the HEA.