We are very pleased to announce the appointment of Dr Lisa Griffith as the inaugural Membership Manager at the Digital Repository of Ireland.
We are very pleased to announce the appointment of Dr Lisa Griffith as the inaugural membership manager at the Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI). Lisa has served as DRI’s programme manager since 2017 and moves into this new role as of 1 February 2022.
As part of the transition from PRTLI (Programme for Research in Third-Level Institutions) Cycle 5 project to sustainable national infrastructure, DRI consulted widely with stakeholders and partners and launched a comprehensive membership model in February 2018. Membership with DRI offers many benefits: in addition to enabling the deposit of digital collections for long term stewardship (preservation and sustained access), many organisations join for the community, network, and knowledge transfer opportunities provided. In practice, these aspects of membership have proven quite popular, supporting members through the ongoing decisions required to make digital collections available the and meaningful ways to keep them available over time. If you want to read more about the process of building the membership model, it has been documented in a blog written for the Digital Preservation Coalition: Developing a Membership Model, or: How to review everything you’ve ever done and who you talked to along the way.
Membership has grown steadily since 2018, and currently, DRI has 38 members drawn from the sectors we serve: research, innovation and education; arts, culture and cultural heritage; governmental agencies and authorities. We are honoured to work with each and every one of our members to ensure sustained access to their digital collections and to help share and promote these collections to wider audiences. This growing membership has of course widened the depth and scope of what we do, so it is with pleasure and a positive sense of occasion that we are now able to create a full-time role in the membership manager to best coordinate and serve member needs.
Dr Lisa Griffith has led DRI’s internal membership taskforce for the last four years, and came to DRI from roles in research and cultural heritage, at Dublin City University (DCU) and the National Print Museum. She has a PhD in History and is a coordinator of the Dublin History Research Network. Lisa has a keen interest in book culture that has prompted her to deliver a series of podcasts, workshops, and walking tours as part of national events such as Culture Night and the Dublin Literature Festival. Lisa has also authored and edited four books on various aspects of Dublin history, including her most recent book Dublin: Then and Now (Pavilion Books, 2018), which traces changes in key cityscapes by pairing stunning archival images of Ireland’s capital with contemporary photographs . She sits on the Dublin City Culture Company Advisory Group. Lisa is a SCRUMstudy Agile Master Certified project manager and holds a certificate in Training and Continuing Education from Maynooth University.
The Membership Manager will focus both on responding to member needs, as well as anticipating future requirements through strategic membership development initiatives. Serving as a liaison to existing members, the manager will also be the first point of contact for membership enquiries, at the following address: members@dri.ie.
For more information, please see DRI’s list of current members, as well as full information on the benefits of membership.
Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash
