The Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI) is delighted to announce that our annual Community Archive Scheme is open for applications for 2023. The Community Archive Scheme is one way that DRI works to help preserve and steward Cultural Heritage, Social Science and Research Data by giving Community Groups with at-risk digital material a route to preservation.
The Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI) is delighted to announce that our annual Community Archive Scheme is open for applications for 2023. The Community Archive Scheme is one way that DRI works to help preserve and steward Cultural Heritage, Social Science and Research Data by giving Community Groups with at-risk digital material a route to preservation. As a publicly funded repository for Ireland’s social and cultural data DRI believes it is important to make long-term preservation accessible to a wide range of organisations, including those operating on a non-funded, voluntary basis.
This scheme offers associate membership to a no, or low, funded group for the period of time it takes them to ingest a collection (see benefits aligned with ‘Associate’ level membership on our DRI Membership page: https://dri.ie/membership). There have been eight previous winners of the Community Archive Scheme including Cork LGBT Archive (2019), Asylum Archive (2020), Cork Community Media Hub (2020), Dublin Ghost Signs (2021), Joe Lee Community Film, The Elephant Collective (2021), Tulsk History Society (2022) and Bray Arts (2022).
DRI Director Natalie Harrower said:
As a national repository for social and cultural data, DRI aims to reflect Ireland in all its diversity, and we recognise that many wonderful collections are housed by community groups and volunteers that lack the infrastructure and funding to make these collections available. Through this scheme we are both able to provide repository services to these archives, and learn from what they do: it’s an excellent exchange and we value it very much.
DRI Membership Manager Lisa Griffith said:
Community Archives and their collections are hugely important to DRI and our membership network. By shining a light on the local activities and artefacts in these collections we can better view, analyse and understand national events. These collections are an important addition to the Repository as they thematically supplement the national collections we hold.
An important part of the scheme is access to training that will enable the winning organisation to ingest the collections. In 2021 Deborah Thorpe, DRI Education and Training Manager, reflected on the training DRI provides winning community archives saying that:
This course has… [assisted] with breaking down barriers to digital preservation, by making topics such as appraising your digital collections for preservation, data protection, and metadata preparation understandable, relatable and accessible to all. ‘Understandable’, because we recognise that every individual who attends DRI training has a different level of existing knowledge of digital preservation processes; ‘relatable’, because sometimes it can be difficult to identify how the intricacies of topics such as GDPR or anonymisation relate to a particular digital collection; and ‘accessible’, because many community archivists are volunteers who do not have expanses of time or resources to spend on either undertaking training or preparing their collections for digital preservation.
You can read Deborah’s full blog post on her 2021 training on our website.
One of the 2022 Community Archive Scheme winners was the Tulsk History Society. On the publication of their collection Noel Sheerin of the society said:
The DRI Community Archive Scheme has enabled Tulsk History Society to place a rare collection of old handwritten letters into the public domain where researchers and other like-minded individuals can interrogate their contents to get a better understanding of the poor living conditions in rural Ireland as well as the opportunities on offer for a new life abroad. The letters, their creators and recipients are now getting the attention they deserve.
You can explore the Tulsk History Society Collection on the repository. You can learn more about the vulnerabilities of digital Cultural Heritage data in this short clip produced by DRI, the National Library of Ireland (NLI) and the Research Data Alliance (RDA).
We will be accepting applications from Thursday 1 of September until midnight Friday 28 of October. DRI is hosting a 30-minute online information session on Monday 10 October at 10.00 am for any community groups that may be interested in applying for the scheme that will explain the benefits of the scheme, how to apply and how applications are judged. We ask that you please register in advance for this meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
For more information on the DRI Community Archive Scheme and to download the application form please visit our dedicated webpage: https://www.dri.ie/dri-community-archive-scheme If you have any further questions please email members@dri.ie
Image: Letters from the Tulsk History Society collection.
