September 11, 2014
For Immediate Release
Inspiring Ireland a finalist for the 2014 Digital Preservation Awards
The Digital Repository of Ireland is delighted to announce that Inspiring Ireland has been chosen as a finalist for the 2014 Digital Preservation Awards. Thirteen finalists in four different categories were announced by the Digital Preservation Coalition on September 11, 2014. Inspiring Ireland is a finalist for the DPC Award for Safeguarding the Digital Legacy, which celebrates the practical application of preservation tools to protect at-risk digital objects.
Inspiring Ireland is an ambitious project to share high-quality images of Ireland’s treasured cultural objects in a single website, built on DRI’s trusted digital repository infrastructure. The project is a collaboration between the DRI, the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, and eight of Ireland’s National Cultural Institutions: Abbey Theatre, Chester Beatty Library, Crawford Art Gallery Cork, Irish Museum of Modern Art, National Museum of Ireland, National Archives of Ireland, National Gallery of Ireland, National Library of Ireland. It is significant because of its combination of curation, partnership and digital preservation, and because of its extensive national scale: it is the first time that objects from all of these institutions have been brought together (while also being properly preserved) into a single curated exhibition for public access.
William Kilbride, Executive Director of the Digital Preservation Coalition, stated: "It’s amazing to see how much Inspiring Ireland has achieved in such a short space of time. It is a wonderful example of collaboration to achieve a shared goal and it has communicated some vital and subtle messages about the importance of digital preservation."
The Digital Preservation Awards were created in 2004 to raise awareness about digital preservation, and are the most prominent celebration of achievement for those people and organisations that have made significant and innovative contributions to ensuring our digital memory is accessible tomorrow.
The Digital Preservation Awards have been celebrating excellence for 10 years now, and they are being supported by some leading organisations in the field, including the NCDD and Open Planets Foundation. The awards ceremony will be hosted by the Wellcome Trust at their newly refurbished London premises on Monday 17th November.
The finalists will attract significant publicity and a deserved career boost, both at organisation and individual level. Those who walk away with a Digital Preservation Award on the night can be proud to claim to be amongst the best projects and practitioners within a rapidly growing and international field.
For more information, see http://www.dpconline.org/advocacy/awards. To follow the awards, see #dpa2014 on Twitter.
Media contact information:
Dr. Natalie Harrower
Creative Lead, Inspiring Ireland
Manager, Education and Outreach
Digital Repository of Ireland
Royal Irish Academy
19 Dawson St.
Dublin 2, Ireland
n.harrower@ria.ie