Monday 20 April 2015

Duchas crowdsources transcriptions for Schools Collection

Manuscripts from the Schools' Collection for counties Kerry and Leitrim have been added to the dúchas.ie database. The online collection now includes the pages written by schoolchildren in Counties Donegal, Donegal, Galway, Kerry, Kildare, Leitrim, Mayo and Waterford.

The Schools Collection is being digitised by the National Folklore Commission (NFC) and consists of some 740,000 pages of folklore and local tradition written by pupils in 5,000 schools in the Irish Free State between 1937 and 1939.

The school children recorded material from their parents, grandparents and neighbours on subjects ranging from oral history, topographical information, folktales and legends, riddles and proverbs, games and pastimes, trades and crafts.

I notice from the updated website that a crowdsourcing project – Meitheal Dúchas.ie – has been started. The NFC is inviting users of the site to transcribe, on a voluntary basis, the Irish-language stories among the Schools' Collection.

The hope is that crowdsourcing will increase community participation in the project and, at the same time, promote the Irish-language material from the Collection. The resulting transcriptions would make these texts available in a fully searchable format.

Further details of the Meitheal Dúchas.ie