The Irish Virtual Research Library and Archive (IVRLA) is a five year PRTLI funded project intended to realise the latent potential of a number of UCD primary and secondary source collections through digitisation, and maximise their value by improving access through the application of new metadata standards and the development of a sophisticated web interface. The project is also active in the development and deployment of open source repository systems.

Background

The project’s original goals included:

·   Make material available to researchers at their desktops, within and beyond the university, thereby reducing inconvenience, saving time, and facilitating collaborative research within UCD and between institutions.

·   Contribute to the conservation of physical resources, as the use of digital surrogates will reduce wear and tear on the originals, and in the majority of cases negate the requirement to access original materials.

·   Facilitate new forms of scholarship allowing for material to be drawn into virtual collections depending upon user research interest or requirements.

·   Facilitate simultaneous searching in a standardised form across a range of resource categories

Team
The project is a component of the Humanities Institute of Ireland (HII) in UCD. The project team comprises digitisers, cataloguers with library or archival science qualifications, IT specialists and a project manger. The project has also utilised the services of people with Irish language competency as many of the collections for inclusion within the repository are in Irish. The project works in co-operation with the repository managers, UCD Library and UCD Research IT.

The IVRLA is at an exciting time in its development with the imminent release of version 1.0 of the repository architecture later this year. Watch for news at <www.ucd.ie/ivrla>.

John McDonough
IVRLA Project Manager