In the sixth blog in our #DRI10 series celebrating ten years of DRI, Programme Manager Lisa Griffith reflects on the launch of DRI’s Membership Model.
The Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI) was formed ten years ago in September 2011. It 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 by a research consortium of six academic partners. It was officially launched in June 2015 and continues to be managed by three core academic institutions – Royal Irish Academy, Trinity College Dublin, and Maynooth University. To mark our ten-year anniversary, DRI staff members are writing a blog a week focusing on different DRI milestones achieved over the past ten years. This is the sixth blog in the #DRI10 celebratory blog series.
The launch of the membership model in Spring 2018 was a landmark moment for the Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI) as an organisation. It represented our growth from a PRTLI research funded project to our realisation as a digital infrastructure with a community of national stakeholders investing directly in the Repository and its future direction. In the four years since we established DRI membership, it has grown to thirty-four members.
Looking back on how we drafted the membership model, DRI Director Natalie Harrower described the process as ‘a fertile opportunity for growth and renewal, mixed with a good dose of vision-setting’. [1] When developing our membership model, we ‘had to ask ourselves more targeted questions, such as: What concrete benefits would potential members pay to access our services? What aspects were most central, and what would be considered “added benefits” of membership?’. [2] After extensive consultation with staff and stakeholders, DRI drafted its full and associate member benefits. DRI membership was launched in February 2018 at an event that also celebrated the contributions of the seventeen founding depositor organisations that were the first to entrust DRI with the long-term preservation of their digital collections.
DRI’s first member was Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII), who joined as the membership model was launched. TII holds the records of archaeological excavations commissioned by the National Roads Authority (NRA) and the Railway Procurement Agency (RPA) during Ireland’s infrastructure building programme. On joining DRI, Rónán Swan, Head of Archaeology and Heritage at TII, said that their reason for joining DRI was TII’s strong commitment ‘to the open data strategy in operation across the public sector’ [3]. He added they were ‘very excited at the prospect of enhancing and enlarging the number of archaeology and related datasets available through the TII Digital Heritage Collections’ and ensuring ‘that the wealth of new archaeological information that has been accumulated since 2001 benefits the general public and heritage professionals to the greatest extent possible’. [4]
Images from 2018 DRI event thanking the DRI Stakeholder Advisory Group and launching the DRI membership model
TII was soon joined by the Arts in Culture Education Research Repository (ACERR). By the end of our first year DRI had nine members and it continued to grow year on year to our current membership level of 34 members. The organisations that make up our membership range in background from research libraries, higher education institutions, county and city councils, national and regional libraries and archives, museums, and research groups. DRI also supports membership from community groups with no or low income through its annual Community Archive Scheme. This scheme has supported six community groups to access our member benefits at an associate level. The activities of these groups vary widely from documentary filmmakers, advocacy groups, and archives but the one thing they all have in common is that they have digital content of regional and national importance that was at risk of being lost without digital preservation.
While we work closely with our members throughout the year, our community meets together once a year at the annual Members’ Forum. The format of this meeting was changed in January 2021 when we launched a monthly Virtual Coffee Morning series. The purpose of these informal coffee mornings is to provide a forum where DRI Members can start a conversation about digital preservation topics, challenges, or projects in a relaxed environment. Each Coffee Morning is hosted by a different DRI Member or DRI Staff Member and they take place for half an hour on the last Wednesday of each month. To date, we have explored topics such as archiving of electronic business records, the challenges faced by community archivists, transcription tools, consent forms, the open access landscape, making publications open access, and we have several exciting topics coming up. You can get a flavour of the discussion at our coffee mornings by reading the interview by Ciarán Wallace, deputy director of Beyond 2022, and Kathryn Cassidy, DRI software engineer, where they look at transcription tools here.
Image of the 2018 DRI Members’ Forum
Our membership has spurred many collaborations and projects that have gone beyond collection ingestion and preservation. One such example is the Enrich Europeana+ project that was launched in May 2021. DRI and Dublin City Library and Archives became part of a pan-European consortium that received European Commission funding to unlock handwritten documents from the nineteenth century and make them available to researchers, students, and the public through the use of citizen science and artificial intelligence.
At DRI we are proud of our community of members and are grateful for what they bring to DRI in terms of knowledge, collections, and assistance in helping to shape the future of the Repository. Collaboration is at the heart of our membership. As the data steward of cultural heritage and social sciences related digital objects and collections, DRI is working alongside its members to ensure the highest standards of archival practice are being used for the long-term preservation, and Open Access, of Ireland’s digital cultural heritage and research data.
If you are interested in exploring membership for your organisation you can contact us at members@dri.ie
By DRI Programme Manager Lisa Griffith
Notes
[1] Harrower, Natalie. 2018. “Building the New Membership Model .” Digital Repository of Ireland. May 14. Accessed Oct 11, 2021. https://www.dri.ie/building-new-membership-model-0.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Swan, Rónán. 2018. “DRI Welcomes Transport Infrastructure Ireland as a New Member.” Digital Repository of Ireland. Jan 26. Accessed Oct 11, 2021. https://www.dri.ie/dri-welcomes-transport-infrastructure-ireland-new-member.
[4] Ibid.
