The Irish Traditional Music Archive / Taisce Cheol Dúchais Éireann (ITMA) has joined the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) this month, becoming the Coalition’s newest Associate Member.
Based in Dublin, ITMA is the national public archive and resource centre for Irish traditional music, song and dance, with a mission to be the globally recognised specialist advisory agency to advance appreciation, knowledge, and the practice of Irish traditional music. ITMA was born into the digital age and digitisation has been a core activity since inception. ITMA holds born-digital collections through both field recording and donations and has also amassed large volumes of digital surrogates from over 30 years of digitisation work carried out on analogue audio, audio-visual, photograph and print collections.
Having invested in the creation and digitisation of collections, ITMA is acutely aware of the importance of preserving this investment long-term.
“ITMA has long been a supporter of the DPC, attending workshops and accessing invaluable documentation,” explains Maeve Gebruers, Archivist for ITMA. “A key strategic goal for ITMA is to prioritise the long-term preservation of our digital assets and to ensure that the organisation delivers the highest standards of digital, information and preservation management.
Joining the DPC is the obvious next step in ITMA’s digital preservation journey in pursuit of these goals. We look forward to engaging with the Digital Preservation Coalition network and learning from this community of active digital preservation practitioners.”
Juan Bicarregui, Chair of the DPC, was delighted to welcome ITMA to the Coalition, saying: “Specialist archives like ITMA play a critical role in preserving our social and cultural heritage. It is so important therefore, that we support, value and help them preserve their digital information for the benefit of all. I look forward to sharing expertise from within the DPC membership whilst learning new perspectives and experiences from the team in Dublin.”
The DPC is an international charitable foundation which supports digital preservation, helping its members around the world to deliver resilient long-term access to digital content and services through community engagement, targeted advocacy work, training and workforce development, capacity building, good practice and standards, and through good management and governance. Its vision is a secure digital legacy.
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