Irish Distillers announces partnership with the Digital Repository of Ireland
Pictured at Irish Distillers: Carol Quinn, Irish Distillers and Dr Lisa Griffith, DRI
Irish Distillers announced a partnership with the Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI), the national body charged with providing digital preservation and access to Ireland’s humanities, cultural heritage, and social sciences data.
Irish Distillers is the first Irish commercial company to partner with the DRI in this manner. The partnership will see records from the Irish Distillers archive digitised and uploaded to the Repository and made openly available from anywhere in the world.
Preserved in the archive are items such as handwritten ledgers containing financial records, some dating from the late 1700s, as well as more modern commercial records, historic mashbills and labels from across the globe.
In partnership with the DRI’s team of digital archivists, records will be identified, digitised and then ingested to the Repository. Preserving important records for the long-term will offer researchers and the public alike a unique insight into Irish history. Work has already begun on identifying suitable archives from the collection at Midleton. The selected materials will be uploaded to the DRI portal over the next 18 months.
Carol Quinn, head of archives, Irish Distillers, said: “We have such a rich documentary archive with unexpected research value. Even routine correspondence with distinctive letterheads can offer a glimpse into the history of printing and design in Ireland. We have been looking for a way to make as much material as possible available for public research to as a wide a community as possible, and now in partnership with the DRI we have someone one who can help and advise on that process.”
Dr Lisa Griffith, interim director, DRI, said: “Irish Distillers Archive are the first commercial archive to make its records available for open access online through the Digital Repository of Ireland. This will provide ground-breaking access to their archive, allowing researchers to investigate these collections from a wide range of angles, and share this rich resource with the wider public.”
