1. Irish Scholarly Resources: Digitisation, Access and Context Electronic Research Resources Relating to Ireland Paul S Ell Centre for Data Digitisation and Analysis Queens University Belfast paul.ell@qub.ac.uk

2. Summary Introduction Key strategic datasets developed by CDDA relating to Ireland Focus on JISC-funded Digital Library of Core Materials on Ireland – what, why, how, and then… Challenges and future developments Handover to Professor Michael Buckland

3. Centre for Data Digitisation and Analysis (CDDA): Background and Objectives Research unit based at Queens University Belfast with 20 staff, bespoke accommodation, and specialised data capture hardware and software Fully grant-funded with an income of around £7,000,000 over the last 7 years from all relevant UK academic funders Aims to develop strategic humanities e-resources Aims to use these resources in its own research and publish scholarly books and journal articles Aims to develop methodologies that assist in the management and interrogation of the source materials to produce new perspectives and scholarship

4. e-resources on Ireland we have made available Act of Union Virtual Library: www.actofunion.ie £250,000 from NOF- Digitisationwww.actofunion.ie Historical Hansard: www.stormontpapers.ahds.ac.uk £303,000 from AHRCwww.stormontpapers.ahds.ac.uk GIS e-Science: £20,000, using the Data Grid Database of Irish Historical Statistics: £250,000 British and Irish Historical Census Project: www.histpop.org.uk, £900,000www.histpop.org.uk Parliamentary Papers referring to Ireland with BOPCRIS: www.bopcris.ac.uk £300,000 www.bopcris.ac.uk Hart Diaries Project: £25,000 ongoing Basic Historical Geographical Information System for Ireland thanks to a £130,000 AHRC award in October 2007. Digital Library of Core Resources on Ireland Various projects with UC Berkeley and the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative

5. Act of Union Virtual Library Imperatives – 200 th anniversary of the Act of Union, increased interest in the Act, access difficulties Range of disparate and rare materials 60,000 digital objects 1798 - 1803 Parliamentary Papers, pamphlets, newspapers, manuscripts In-house solutions to cut costs – from data capture, to the development of a database driven website E-content better than the analogue materials – enhanced searching, one stop shop www.actofunion.ac.uk

7. The Database of Irish Historical Statistics – project aims and imperatives To construct a census-based relational database for the period 1821 - 1971 To facilitate regional, national and comparative research on Ireland Restricted availability of published census returns Opportunity to further the quantitative study of Irish history Technological advances make possible large scale database projects

8. The Database of Irish Historical Statistics 32,934,018 data values from 1821 to 1971, and then linked to contemporary digital sources Mostly census data but also annual agricultural statistics, civil registration information, crime statistics... Topics include population statistics, crop and stock data, language, literacy, religion, occupations, employment, housing, emigration, industry and industrial structure, trade and commerce, wages, pauperism etc Outputs include a book mapping the Famine www.qub.ac.uk/cdda/iredb/dbhme.htm

9. Stormont debates £303,330 Arts and Humanities Research Council Resource Enhancement Grant 90,000 pages of Hansard from the House of Commons and the Senate from 1921 to 1973 Full text and page image searchable by MP, place, date, subject and free text Will link to texts of contemporary debate www.oireachtas-debates.gov.ie and www.niassemby.gov.uk www.oireachtas-debates.gov.ie www.niassemby.gov.uk In the past material difficult access, difficult to use with no integrated index, failed to impact on the study of Northern Ireland, and did not address an interest in devolved government

12. Full-text search – the results IRA Ian Paisley Drunkenness Emigration Army Civil Service Irish language Budgets

13. A key strategic resource: Digital Library of Core Materials on Ireland exemplar £620,000 grant from JISC to digitise journals, monographs and manuscripts relating to Irish Studies and create the foundations of a digital library resource Initial archive of around 470,000 pages Up to100 journals covering 200 year period and about 400,000 pages 2,500 pages of manuscript 205 key monographs Machine-readable text for all journals and monographs and some manuscripts Detailed object level metadata

14. Project Partners Centre for Data Digitisation and Analysis at Queens University Belfast has a long track record of key e-resource development Analogue Content Partners – Queens University Library, Linen Hall Library, Robinson Library, journal publishers, Royal Irish Academy e-Content Partners – AHDS (Centre for e-Research), CDDA, University College Dublin, Digital Humanities Observatory Dissemination Partner – JSTOR Preservation Partners – AHDS – now replaced by Expert Centre Network, JSTOR

15. Project Imperatives Access to rare resources without visiting Belfast Resource discovery – use of less common journals New, complex searching using detailed metadata and semantic searching Serendipity A one stop shop for journals – and more Enhanced research developing from better access Insert image

16. Content Selection Consultation patterns from partner libraries Academic recommendation through a pre-project survey International Advisory Panel Site usage statistics Journals prepared to sign licence (or out of copyright)

17. Why the DLCMI project works Diaspora of Irish Studies Content chosen by academics for academics Provides basic research materials - humanities scholars not required to change the way they work - a model suggested by the British Academy Critical mass: Significant body of material which will continue to be augmented – it wont be a dead archive with new journal issues added, and new journal titles A fully working technical solution in place with CDDA and JSTOR including detailed metadata and reference linking, and outstanding content partners Sustainable business model with JSTOR with subscriptions outside Britain and Ireland and free access within

18. Key role of JSTOR JSTOR is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to helping the scholarly community discover, use, and build upon a wide range of intellectual content JSTOR operates a research platform offering a high- quality interdisciplinary archive of scholarly content Today, there are 779 full back runs of journals online (1100 total signed) The archive comprises16 collections, multidisciplinary and discipline-specific 553 publishers, located in 26 countries, participate in JSTOR 50 disciplines are represented in the archive

19. DLCMI: Ongoing development Adding additional materials within the JSTOR collaboration - manuscripts and monographs now, e- publications, datasets, images, video in the future? Requirement of funding to demonstrate a step- change in Irish Studies research. As a result QUB will work with leading US institutions including UC Berkeley, IUPUI, Notre Dame, with RIA, and others Complex searching of the archive - the semantic web. Search by place, person and subject in context with UC Berkeley thanks to an NEH grant

20. Overall challenges for now and the future Interlinking QUB e-resources and then using the Data Grid to associate disparate Irish Studies resources The need to demonstrate advancement of an Irish Studies research agenda Challenge of managing the data deluge and the implications it has for metadata and contextual searching Sustainability – How do we maintain what we have and build on it Some answers – Reference Linking with JSTOR; the Grid with ECAI; help with using material; our work with Michael Buckland and UC Berkeley

23. Reference linking Reference links in the JSTOR Archive are indicated by an arrow allowing the user to click directly through to the cited article.

24. The citations from a 1964 article in the American Journal of Legal History exemplify how often the content selected for the Ireland Collection appears in the JSTOR Archive. This feature is one way that information technology will be utilised to enhance discoverability of these resources for scholars.

25. Integrating e-resources by place, context and chronology: Irish Studies Research Resources: statistics, maps, photographs, text, manuscripts, existing e-resources, websites, museum objects...