The recording is now available for ‘DRI and the Europeana Common Culture Project: Sharing Irish Digital Data in a European Context’, a webinar exploring how to reach wider audiences with digital cultural heritage data.
On 17 Dec 2020, the Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI) hosted their final webinar of 2020: ‘DRI and the Europeana Common Culture Project: Sharing Irish Digital Data in a European Context’.
DRI has been working with Europeana, a digital platform that shares cultural heritage data online, since Jan 2019 as the Irish partner in Europeana’s Common Culture Project. The Europeana Common Culture Project aims to develop a harmonised and coordinated environment for Europeana’s national aggregators, to collaborate, share resources and technical means, and agree on common recommendations and standards.
Our webinar marked the end of the Common Culture Project, reflected on the achievements of the project, and highlighted DRI’s plans to continue to support Irish memory institutions and cultural heritage institutions in sharing their data with European audiences.
The webinar was chaired by Dáire Rooney, the content and engagement coordinator for the Europeana Common Culture project at DRI. Dáire gave an overview of DRI’s development of an aggregation service through the project and DRI’s plans to continue to support cultural heritage institutions as a national aggregator in the future. So far, 8,001 objects have been aggregated as part of the project while 17,063 objects have been submitted to Europeana and are awaiting publication. DRI has aggregated collections from 10 DRI members and will continue to aggregate collections from members as a national aggregation service. Dáire also spotlighted DRI’s involvement in the collection campaign ‘Europeana Sport – Ireland’s Stories’, featuring stories and memorabilia demonstrating the richness and diversity of sporting history in Ireland. The collection features many different sports – pole vaulting, Gaelic football, surfing, showjumping, the Special Olympics, hockey, kendo, running, football, horse riding, kung fu and tennis. You can explore the rich variety of stories that have been collected so far on the Europeana platform.
Our next speaker, Tadhg O’Shea from the Arts, Film and Investment Unit of the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport, Gaeltacht and Media, discussed Europeana and digitisation from the perspective of the Department. Tadhg stressed Ireland’s commitment to Europeana and the value of being part of a network that allows for knowledge sharing and the promotion of Ireland’s cultural heritage to wider audiences in an innovative way.
DRI Software Engineer Dr Kathryn Cassidy gave an overview of what Europeana can offer Irish cultural heritage institutions, from the opportunity to be a part of a network of experts in the field of digital cultural heritage, to the chance to participate in events and training, share stories through Europeana’s Collection Days, and avail of funding opportunities.
DRI Software Developer Mashal Ahmad followed Kathryn’s talk by sharing information about the development of a pilot 3D viewer for the DRI repository and Europeana as part of the project. DRI has been working on collecting and preserving 3D cultural heritage data with the potential for reuse in various domains such as open science, education, research and tourism. Mashal outlined the challenges and opportunities of working with 3D Data and gave examples of work DRI has done to support the aggregation of 3D data, from DRI’s work on an initial dataset containing terrestrial scans of various archaeological monuments, bridges and famous statues provided by Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII), to Mashal’s work developing an open-source 3D face shield which can be viewed and downloaded from DRI.
Our final speaker, Padraic Stack, senior librarian at Dublin City Libraries and Archives (DCLA) gave a practical case study of the benefits of aggregating collections to Europeana from the perspective of a depositing organisation.
We would like to thank all of our speakers and the audience members for their contributions to the final DRI webinar of 2020. If you missed the live event, we encourage you to enjoy the recording so you can learn more about how Irish digital cultural heritage data can be promoted on a European level so that it can be used and reused for enjoyment, research, and education.
Resources
Ahmad, Mashal, and Kathryn Cassidy. 2020. “DRI Blog: Experiences Preserving 3D data at the Digital Repository of Ireland.” Digital Preservation Coalition. September 18. https://www.dpconline.org/events/dpc-home?start=2540.
Cassidy, Kathryn, and Mashal Ahmad. 2020. “Introducing the Europeana Common Culture 3D pilot.” Europeana Pro. December 11. https://pro.europeana.eu/post/introducing-the-europeana-common-culture-3d-pilot.
Downing, Killian, and Kathryn Cassidy. 2020. “Collecting Ireland’s sport stories during COVID-19.” Europeana Pro. December 17. https://pro.europeana.eu/post/collecting-ireland-s-sport-stories-during-covid-19.
