National Library of Ireland Digital Archiving Workshops with the School of History
This Spring students on the School of History’s MA in Archives and Records Management programme were given the opportunity to take part in a series of hands-on workshops to develop practical experience of archiving collections of digital material. 
The workshops, which were created by staff in the Digital Collections division of the National Library of Ireland, focused on the archiving of material that is born digital; this means it was created in a digital way, such as a Word document, a digital photograph, or a webpage. The workshops complemented teaching across a broad range of modules on the MA Archives and Records Management programme, including areas such as archival preservation, appraisal, description, and ethics.
Three of the four workshops were led by Kieran O’Leary, the NLI’s Digital Repository Services Manager, who is currently completing the second year of the MA in Archives and Records Management programme. Kieran was supported in the workshops by Leona Fearon, Digital Preservation Analyst, and Della Keating, Born Digital Archives Lead, who has been an adjunct lecturer in the School of History since 2021. The first three workshops focused on the tools recordkeepers currently use to identify the contents of digital collections and how they can be safely preserved and transferred into a repository. Many of the tools are open source and rely on significant input from and collaboration with the record keeping community.
The fourth workshop in the series was led by Maria Ryan, the NLI web archivist, who is also a graduate of the UCD MA Archives programme. Maria’s workshop introduces students to the practical tools used to preserve websites and the hands-on skills required by archivists for this process.
Unlike traditional collections of paper records, digital material requires far earlier intervention on the part of the archivist and ideally a lot of input from the creator or donor. The tools being discussed by the NLI team help to ensure that donors can trust in the process of long-term preservation of authentic, reliable, and usable digital records. The workshops which were held onsite in the NLI and in UCD were also open to NLI staff to attend. This created a positive mix of participants of students and professionals and allowed the MA students to appreciate the relevance and application of their learning to the workplace environment. Massive thanks are due to the staff in the NLI for their input and collaboration on this really positive initiative.
