Dúchas.ie: ré nua i stair Chnuasach Bhéaloideas Éireann

This article examines the Dúchas project, a collaboration between the National Folklore Collection (NFC) in University College Dublin (UCD) and Fiontar in Dublin City University, which aims to create a digital online version of the Collection. The current phase of the project is being funded by the Department of Arts, Heritage and Gaeltacht Affairs and by UCD although an initial pilot project was funded entirely by the Department. That pilot phase saw the digitization of four counties from the Schools’ Collection. The current project phase will continue to focus on digitizing the Schools’ Collection and on improving and adding to the functionality of the website. The article looks briefly at the history of the Schools’ Collection, a vast collection of folklore collected by primary school pupils in the late 1930s. It contains material from all over the country and the extent of the scheme has led to it becoming the best known of the NFC’s various collections, with the majority of visitors to the NFC in UCD drawn there by the involvement of family or friends in the project. It is for this reason that it was chosen as a priority for digitization. There follows a detailed description of the various stages of the digitization process and of the resources that have been created to enable this. The final section details the process of digitally cataloguing the Schools’ Collection material and notes some of the challenges that this involves as well as opportunities to add value to the material such as by linking it to other authoritative digital resources such as the Placenames Database of Ireland. The Dúchas project is placed in context of the gradual opening up of the NFC over the years from a resource for approved scholars only to a publically accessible archive in UCD. This online iteration will make the material more accessible still, particularly to those located outside of Ireland, as well as adding value through additional cataloguing and search functionality