JISC

Latest News (July 2009): Over 70 journal titles from the Ireland Collection are now available via JSTOR, with a hanful of other titles to be added in early 2010. Librarians can sign their institution up for free access via the page on JISC Collections website.

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The project

The demands for research materials relating to Ireland cannot be overestimated, and nor can the current paucity of material available either online or through UK-based academic libraries. Irish Studies is an active and developing area of scholarship but there is a clear lack of research resources available. Analogue material is simply not held by most university libraries, and e-resources are few and far between. Methods of conducting research are changing as a result of technological developments but Irish Studies is lacking basic online bibliographic and resource discovery tools that are now accepted as standard in other disciplines. In order to bring Irish Studies into line with other subject areas and maintain academic standards, improvements are not only important but imperative.

This project fills a critical gap in the provision of research and learning resources in Irish studies. The content comes from an unparalleled grouping of collaboration - collectively the partners hold an unrivalled range of printed research materials that are simply not available to the academic community in such critical mass elsewhere. The project will make the resources in the partner institutions more accessible to a wider audience.

The content

We have selected a cohesive collection of material drawing on three exceptional world-leading Irish Studies collections.

Queen’s University: holds the large Hibernica Collection which has particular strengths for the period 1749 to 1814 in Irish history, politics and economics together with cultural studies and Anglo-Irish literature spanning the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.

The Linen Hall Library: holds an extensive collection of journals and pamphlets, the digitisation of which will create an invaluable resource.

The Robinson Library: has a remarkable collection of manuscripts and monographs, including the world famous Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift, a copy of Benjamin Motte’s first edition dated 28 October 1726, with amendments and markings in Swift’s own handwriting.

CELT the Corpus of Electronic Texts: brings a wealth of Irish literary and historical culture to the Internet. It has a searchable online textbase consisting of over 900 contemporary and historical documents from many areas, including literature and the other arts.

The resource includes closed runs of journals with titles published in the 18th century through to the 20th. The political titles of the late 18th century comment on the many political upheavals taking place (locally and abroad), the importance and accuracy of empirical research in the 19th century is now recognised, and equally important are the small runs of literary journals that flourished in the early part of the 20th century. Current (in copyright) journals (approximately 50% of the project’s journal collection) also feature.

The process

Each image s been captured individually on either a flatbed or book page scanner with a skilled operator checking the quality of each image and adjusting image scanning settings as necessary to obtain a digital surrogate of the printed page of outstanding quality. Following the successful conversion of the analogue text into a highly accurate machine-readable form, the text itself, where based on books and journals, has been marked up using XML to reflect the nature of the material.

The partnership of Queen's University with JSTOR will significantly promote the digital library. JSTOR is well established as the principal online archive for journal backfiles. It has many institutional users worldwide. Under our agreement JSTOR will serve the digital library and promote it to the tens of thousands of scholars already using its service.

The future

The Irish Studies Collection will be made freely available to all users within the British Isles whether the general public, lone scholars, or institutions. Outside the British Isles JSTOR will operate their existing subscription model. This will result in an income stream which will be used in three ways. First, funds will be used by JSTOR to maintain and enhance their dissemination systems and associated hardware. Second, JSTOR will offer publishers a modest revenue stream to make recent issues of journals available under a ‘moving wall’ approach. We expect that these measures will ensure that the e-library will continue to acquire back issues of journals. Third, funds will be available annually to the Queen’s team to fund further digitisation work thus extending and enhancing the digital library. These funds will also allow an Academic Advisory Panel to be retained to provide guidance on the selection of material to augment the library and act as advocates for the resource.

The project plan

Download the project plan to find out more about the detail of the project.

Lead site: The Queen's University of Belfast
Project partners: The Linen Hall Library; the Robinson Library; the Royal Irish Academy; CELT University College Cork; University College Dublin; Centre for e-Research (King's College London)

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