Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI) Community Archives Membership Scheme

Applications are invited for the first DRI Community Archives Membership Scheme. 

Overview

The Digital Repository of Ireland launched a paid membership model in February 2018. In that time several organisations have joined as Full or Associate members. As a largely public-funded repository we believe it is important to make long-term preservation of digital materials open to a wide range of organisations, including those operating on a non-funded, voluntary basis. To the end, we are launching a Community Archives Membership Scheme. One organisation will be granted a year’s free membership for the year 2019 under this Scheme.

Criteria

• To apply, organisations must be low or no-income - for example, community groups, civil society organisations or charities/non-profits that are operated by volunteers.
• The Membership offered would be for one calendar year at Associate level (see our Members Benefits list for an outline of the benefits available).
• The Membership is conditional on the organisation committing to depositing at least one collection in the DRI during that period. DRI staff will provide help and support, but organisations should be in a position to commit at least one volunteer/member to take on the task of preparing materials for ingest, active ingest and creating metadata. Membership includes DRI Training courses which guide members through this process.
• Organisations will be supplied with a DRI Membership Logo and a special logo for the Scheme which will be displayed on their collection in the Repository and can be used on their own publicity material.
• The Organisation’s material should be suitable for Open Access publishing (e.g. all objects intended for ingest must have a rights statement and some form of reuse licence. Material where the rights holder is unknown would not be suitable.)
• Organisations from anywhere on the island of Ireland, or international organisations with digital material pertaining to Ireland, are welcome to apply.

How to Apply

Please submit a 1000-2000 word outline covering the following points:

• An overview of your organisation, including its history, mission, funding (if any) and remit.
• An overview / inventory of digital content you have identified that may be suitable for ingest.
• A commitment to making one or more volunteers available for the practical work of attending training and carrying out ingest.
• Submit as a plain-text, Word/Open Office or PDF file to dri@ria.ie.

Assessment

Applications will be assessed by DRI under the following criteria:

• Eligibility in terms of unfunded/income status
• Ability to commit volunteer(s) to the training and ingest process
• Collections of significant cultural, artistic interest and/or of interest to humanities and social science researchers, with relevance to Ireland.
• Materials in collection deemed at-risk, with relevance to Ireland.

Deadlines

The deadline for applications is Friday 11 January 2019 at 5pm

The successful Organisation will be notified by 30 January 2019

Submit applications as a plain-text, Word/Open Office or PDF file to dri@ria.ie.