Cuimhneamh an Chláir has issued a call out for volunteers for a very special project.
Due to generous funding from the Michael Guinee Charitable Foundation, Cuimhneamh an Chláir has been able to hire an archivist and an archival assistant over a 2 year period (2026 – 2027) in order to lodge its entire oral history archive to the Digital Repository of Ireland.
In order to prepare the recordings for upload they also need a vast voluntary effort to listen to the recordings and write summaries of them.
“If you love listening to older people telling stories and talking about traditions, folklore and their own Co. Clare lives, this is your chance to get involved,” Cuimhneamh an Chláir manager, Paula Carroll said.
“We’re ‘crowd-transcribing’ the archive at the moment. Cuimhneamh an Chláir has been transformed by the opportunity to hire an archivist and archival assistant for these 2 years, but we also need lots of volunteers in order to get to grips with the 900+ interviews in our collection.
Collecting these precious oral histories is one thing. But processing and safeguarding them is a whole other job of work. And that’s where we need the people of Clare and beyond to come to our aid.”
Ms Carroll says that Cuimhneamh an Chláir will advertise and provide training at regular intervals over the next year to people who would like to volunteer with this archive of Clare culture.
She continues: “To help us, you would need your own laptop and the ability to access or download the recordings from links we send. We’ll show you how. You also need the patience to listen and write summaries of what you’re hearing onto our interview summary forms.”
Carroll invites anyone who would like to get involved to send an email t info@clarememories.ie for more information.
She reminds people that volunteers can help from anywhere in the world. The Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI) is a national Trustworthy Digital Repository (TDR) for Ireland’s humanities, cultural heritage, and social sciences data. DRI has been certified with the CoreTrustSeal certification since 2018. They are committed to ensuring the collections and data that they steward are not just sustainable but also meet the FAIR requirements of being Findable, Accessible, interoperable and reusable.