Joint collaborative initiative between SETU Libraries and SETU's Research Office sees SETU join National digital repository for Ireland’s humanities, social sciences, and cultural heritage data
WIT Libraries and WIT's Department of Research, Innovation & Graduate Studies are pleased to announce that the South East Technological University (WIT) has joined the Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI), a trusted national infrastructure for Ireland’s social and cultural heritage, who preserve, curate, and provide sustained access to a wealth of Ireland’s humanities and social sciences data.
The two central purposes of DRI is to preserve Ireland’s digital heritage for the long term, and to provide the users, with access to our culture heritage. https://www.dri.ie/
Custodians of collections
WIT is recognised as the leading research performer in the institute of technology sector and its libraries offer a comprehensive support framework for students, staff, and external users. Over the past decade, SETU Libraries have become the custodians of a considerable range of historical special collections. The collections consist of images, audio, videos, qualitative and qualitative data, and physical archival material that has been digitised spanning from the nineteenth-century to the present.
WIT Libraries play a pivotal role in facilitating scholarly and academic research through the historical artefacts in their collections which are key to understanding the heritage of Waterford and the wider Southeast region. These collections include the Christ Church Cathedral Collection, Bonaparte-Wyse Collection, Red Kettle Theatre Archives, the Graves & Sons Shipping Company Archive, and the Justice for Magdalenes Archive.
Developing discoverability
WIT Libraries is committed to ensuring that students and other library users can easily access archival collections to support research and learning. SETU Libraries, WIT’s Centre for INformation SYstems and TEchno-culture (INSYTE), and the Michael Cooley Laboratory will work with DRI to preserve WIT’s rich cultural heritage collections for long-term access and enhanced discoverability. SETU is eager to benefit from DRI expertise and training as a DRI Member and to contribute to a collaborative community network of archivists, researchers, policy-makers, and other groups engaged in digital preservation.
Terry O’Brien, Head of Library and Information Services at South East Technological University, said of the new partnership: "We are really pleased to become part of the DRI network. We look forward to expanding our national and international footprint with the DRI and Europeana, to ensure our special and unique collections are not just preserved but available to all our stakeholders, interested members of the public and the wider research community. Joining DRI is in keeping with our strategic goals and research profile and affords us the opportunity to enhance our knowledge and skills through training and collaboration. We very much look forward to working with DRI and utilising the DRI platform to start sharing our digitised materials. I wish to acknowledge the support of the SETU Research Support Unit, led by Vice-President for Research, Innovation & Graduate Studies Dr Mark White in supporting and partnering on this initiative."
Welcome for WIT
DRI looks forward to working with SETU to preserve their collections and maximise the reach of their research data over the coming months.
DRI Director Natalie Harrower welcomed DRI’s latest member: "We are very pleased to welcome SETU in the growing community of higher education institutions that make up a key part of DRI’s membership, and look forward to stewarding some of their unique and wonderfully varied collections. We also look forward to building broader support for the institutes of technology sector, and are particularly excited to partner with SETU in this respect, as their track record in collaborative research and system-wide training inspires us to provide greater support from a national preservation perspective."