As a repository for Ireland’s social and cultural data, we value the publication of a diversity of datasets. We are offering free membership and all the related benefits as part of our Community Archive Scheme.
Overview
As a publicly funded repository, DRI believes it is important to make long-term preservation of digital materials open to a wide range of organisations, including those operating on a non-funded, voluntary basis. As a repository for Ireland’s social and cultural data, we value the publication of a diversity of datasets and are offering free membership and all the related benefits as part of our Community Archive Scheme. We welcome and encourage applications from low or no-income organisations that meet the criteria described below.
You can learn about the DRI’s Membership model and benefits here.
Meet our current members here.
This is the third edition of the Scheme. The first winner (2019) was the Cork LGBT Archive, a collection that aims to preserve and share information in relation to the rich history of Cork’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Communities. The collection has been preserved for long-term access in the DRI and can be browsed in the repository here. The second winner (2020) was the Asylum Archive, and you can read about this collection here.
Criteria
To apply, organisations must be low or no-income – for example, community groups, civil society organisations or charities/non-profits that are operated by volunteers.
The Membership offered would be for one calendar year (see benefits aligned with ‘Associate’ level membership in our Members Benefits list).
The Membership is conditional on the organisation working to deposit at least one collection in the DRI during that period. DRI staff will provide help and support, but organisations should be in a position to commit at least one volunteer/member to take on the task of preparing materials for ingest, active ingest, and creating metadata. The winner will be expected to attend DRI Training courses which guide members through this process.
Organisations will be supplied with a DRI Membership Logo and a special logo for the Scheme which will be displayed on their collection in the Repository and can be used on their own publicity material.
The Organisation’s material should be suitable for Open Access publishing (e.g. all objects intended for ingest must have a rights statement and some form of reuse licence. Material where the rights holder is unknown would not be suitable).
Metadata that accompanies uploaded material will be published on the DRI with a CC BY licence. Should the winning organisation wish for their material to be aggregated to Europeana, the metadata will be published there with a CC0 licence. For more information see DRI’s Factsheet on Copyright, Licensing and Open Access.
Organisations from anywhere on the island of Ireland, or international organisations with digital material pertaining to Ireland, are welcome to apply.
How to apply
Please submit a 1000-2000 word outline covering the following points:
An overview of your organisation, including its history, mission, funding (if any) and remit.
An overview / inventory of digital content you have identified that may be suitable for ingest, including the volume of the content, file formats, and current metadata accompanying the content.
A breakdown of the time to be committed by one or more volunteers to attend training, prepare metadata, and ingest content over a year.
A link to a website for the project and/or an attached sample of content with any current metadata.
Assessment
Applications will be assessed by DRI using the following criteria:
Eligibility in terms of unfunded/income status.
Ability to commit member(s) of your organisation to the training and ingest process.
Collections of significant cultural, artistic interest and/or of interest to humanities and social science researchers, with relevance to Ireland.
Materials in collection deemed at-risk, with relevance to Ireland.
Deadlines
Submit applications as a plain-text, Word/Open Office or PDF file by email to dri@ria.ie
The deadline for applications is Friday 30 Oct 2020 at 12 noon.
The winner will be announced on World Digital Preservation Day on 5 Nov 2020.
