This blog post reflects on our recent Culture Night event ‘Dublin in the Archives’, and contains links to the recording and presentation slides.
On 17 September 2021, the Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI) hosted ‘Dublin in the Archives: Digital collections exploring the city and county’ as part of the Culture Night 2021 programme of events. The webinar brought together the content creators and curators of digital collections relating to Dublin’s past and present to showcase the diversity of Dublin’s digital cultural heritage. Deputy City Librarian at Dublin City Library and Archive (DCLA), Brendan Teeling, chaired the event. DCLA holds a remarkable range of digital collections within the DRI that both document and illuminate the history of Dublin over the last eight centuries. We were delighted to collaborate with DCLA on this event, which attracted over 100 attendees from across the island of Ireland to celebrate our shared digital cultural heritage. If you missed the event, you can enjoy the recording below or on the DRI Vimeo channel. DRI event recordings are also preserved for long-term access in our events collection in the Repository.
Our first speaker was Emma Clarke, founder of Dublin Ghost Signs, an online collection of Dublin’s old and fading signs which have stood the test of time. In her talk, Emma explained that ‘ghost signs’ are the old and typically hand-painted signs of advertisements and businesses that have closed their doors for the final time. Emma documents both traditional hand-painted ghost signs and other types of old business signs such as stone-carved signs, threshold mosaics, and fascia signs. In Dublin, these signs are everywhere – on walls, above buildings, and on tiled mosaic doorsteps. They provide a window to the hidden history of Dublin’s commercial past. Emma shared how she has used archival collections from resources such as DCLA, RTÉ Archives, UCD Digital Library, the National Library of Ireland (NLI), the National Archives of Ireland (NAI), the Irish Newspaper Archives, and the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage to contextualise and inform her own research into the ghost signs that she has been documenting. Emma provided a wonderful insight into how she creatively combined information from these diverse archival resources to present the images she collected in an interactive way. Using Capel street as an example, Emma illustrated how the information she has collected can be visualised using ‘story maps’, which combine images, video, or audio with a narrative to create a rich interactive experience. Take a virtual stroll through the Capel Street story map here. Emma concluded her talk by speaking about digital preservation and the importance of preserving the record of our shared cultural heritage for long-term access. Valuable visual records of Dublin’s past, like those contained within the Dublin Ghost Signs collection, are at risk because websites and social media sites are precarious storage platforms that tend towards loss and disappearance. Without a digital preservation plan in place to actively manage digital content over time, these records could be lost. Emma is one of the winners of the DRI Community Archive Scheme (currently open for applications), which offers free DRI Membership and digital preservation training and support to community archivists operating with no or low funding. Through this Scheme, Emma’s collection will be safeguarded for sustained access in the DRI Repository so that the images can be enjoyed into the future. Learn more by accessing Emma’s presentation slides below or on the DRI Slideshare.
Our next speaker was Karen De Lacey, county archivist at Fingal County Council. Karen began her talk by sharing the history of the Fingal Archives, which holds records of local government in Ireland dating from 1775 as well as private papers, maps, photographs, postcards, and other ephemera. Karen then focused on a particular collection – the Fingal 1916 Collection – which is in the process of being preserved for long-term access in DRI. This collection contains digitised versions of artefacts that members of the public brought to ‘Fingal Memorabilia Days’ in 2016. These memorabilia collection days called for objects related to the role played by Fingallians in the fight for Irish freedom in 1916. This archival initiative allowed Fingal to provide public access to the digitised artefacts while enabling members of the public to retain hold of treasured personal items. Karen personalised the collection by focusing on the stories of particular people, such as Dubliners Peadar Kelly (1886-1961) and Jack Woodcock (1899-1965), whose life stories emerged from the objects that were donated. Karen concluded her talk with a whistle-stop tour of the diversity of collections available in Fingal Archives – from the records of Dublin Grand Jury (1816-1899), to Dublin County Council plans and maps, and collections of Dublin interest postcards. DRI looks forward to working with Fingal to make this rich collection material available to researchers, historians, and members of the public for sustained access through the Repository. Access Karen’s presentation below or on the DRI Slideshare.
Karen was followed by the community filmmaker Joe Lee. Since the early 2000s, Joe has been making a series of community-based films set in Dublin neighbourhoods that present a unique insight into the social history of the city from the 1980s onwards. Joe is one of the winners of the DRI Community Archive Scheme and his collection of eight community-based films has been preserved for long-term access in the Repository. The films explore the social history of Dublin communities in postcodes 8, 7, 3, and 1 and were developed in community contexts in response to regeneration projects or in collaboration with local artists or community development workers. All of the films feature a wide range of interviews with local people who speak about their own experiences and stories from their communities in the context of the ever-changing city. Joe shared that the films were at risk of erasure as they were stored on his own media devices and social media accounts and had no permanent home before being preserved for sustained access on DRI. The films explore a variety of themes ranging from older people’s relationship with dance and the city (The Area, 2013), to housing conditions and regeneration projects (Dreams in the Dark, 2002, O’Devaney Gardens – Inside Out Outside In, 2007) the Dublin Drugs Crisis (Dark Room, 2002 and CityWide, 2011), street trading (Bananas on the Breadboard, 2010) and local lore, including the dramatic tale of a lioness that escaped in Fairview, told in the award-winning film Fortune’s Wheel (2015). As Joe notes, ‘people who don’t normally get to tell their stories are very much cherished and celebrated in these films’, making them especially relevant in terms of providing oral history records of working-class Dublin communities. Explore Joe’s collection of community-based films here: https://doi.org/10.7486/DRI.90205r016 Access Joe’s presentation below or on the DRI Slideshare.
Our final speaker, Dr James Louis Smith, is a postdoctoral fellow on the Ports, Past and Present project at University College Cork. James discussed the community engagement activities of the Ports, Past and Present project in the Dublin Port area, its efforts to build up and archive community port stories and heritage, the groups of stakeholders that it works with to do so, and future archiving possibilities beyond the scope and lifecycle of the project that he hopes to encourage to ensure the visibility and longevity of the collections after the project ends. The two main archiving activities of this project in the Dublin docks are: creating a new archive of cultural heritage material about life in Dublin and its port, which will be preserved in DRI for long-term access, and using the stakeholder relationships and connections of the project to advocate for greater visibility of existing archival material. James related that Ports, Past and Present don’t just create archival material, they also function as a network that forms lasting connections between people, archival material, and stories. Some of the stories captured by this project include health in Dublin Port, emigration in the early twentieth century, Brexit preparations, and daily life on the Dublin docks. James shared that community engagement work is at the heart of what the project does – their work would not be possible without the support of community groups, like the Dublin Dock Workers Preservation Society, that are custodians of images and stories related to the ports. The project’s role is to create an archive to support and amplify these stories. Find out more about this fascinating project by watching the recording or accessing James’s presentation slides below or on the DRI Slideshare.
The talks were followed by a Q&A session, expertly moderated by Brendan, which further developed the themes and topics introduced in the talks. We are grateful to DCLA for collaborating with us to create a memorable evening of talks and discussion around Dublin’s digital cultural heritage. We are also grateful to our four speakers for sharing their expertise and stories and to our audience for their engagement and enthusiasm. Below you will find a list of further resources to explore if you wish to continue learning about Dublin in the Archives.
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Further Resources
Census of Ireland 1901/1911 and Census Fragments and Substitutes, 18221-51. Accessed Sept 21, 2021. http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/.
Digital Repository of Ireland. Accessed Sept 21, 2021. https://repository.dri.ie/.
Digital Repository of Ireland. (2018) DRI Event Videos, Digital Repository of Ireland [Distributor], Digital Repository of Ireland [Depositing Institution], https://doi.org/10.7486/DRI.3485bx88b.
DRI Community Archive Scheme. Accessed Sept 10, 2021. https://dri.ie/dri-community-archive-scheme.
Digital Repository of Ireland. (2016) Digital Repository of Ireland Publications, Digital Repository of Ireland [Distributor], Digital Repository of Ireland [Depositing Institution], https://doi.org/10.7486/DRI.3b591898r.
Dublin City Library and Archive. Accessed Sept 21, 2021. http://digital.libraries.dublincity.ie.
Dublin Dock Workers Preservation Society. Accessed 09 21, 2021. https://ddwps.omeka.net/.
Dublin Ghost Signs. Accessed Sept 21, 2021. https://dublinghostsigns.com/.
Fingal Archives. Accessed Sept 21, 2021. https://www.fingal.ie/council/service/archives.
Ireland, National Library of. Flickr Commons. Accessed Sept 21, 2021. https://www.flickr.com/photos/nlireland/.
Irish Newspaper Archives. Accessed Sept 21, 2021. https://www.irishnewsarchive.com/.
Joe Lee. (2021) Dublin based community films by Joe Lee, Digital Repository of Ireland [Distributor], Joe Lee Community Based Films [Depositing Institution], https://doi.org/10.7486/DRI.90205r016.
National Inventory of Architectural Heritage. Accessed Sept 21, 2021. https://www.buildingsofireland.ie/.
Ports, Past and Present. Accessed Sept 21, 2021. https://portspastpresent.eu/.
RTÉ Archives. Accessed Sept 21, 2021. https://www.rte.ie/archives/.
Story Map. Accessed Sept 21, 2021. https://storymap.knightlab.com/.
UCD Digital Library. Accessed Sept 21, 2021. https://digital.ucd.ie/browse/.
