Crowdsourcing Irish History

Irish diaspora is how we refer to the historical process of migration from Ireland, recorded since the Early Middle Ages, but particularly evident since the XVIII century. By the 21st century, an estimated 80 million people worldwide claimed some Irish descent. The online project Historic Graves (https://historicgraves.com) capitalised on this global phenomenon, putting together a worldwide community of more than 15,000 users, engaged in generating a nationwide genealogical dataset. The initiative started in 2010, as a community focused grassroots heritage project, where local community groups are trained in low-cost high-tech field survey of historic graveyards and recording of their own oral histories. The heritage dataset put together by the Historic Graves project has proved to be a valuable genealogical and touristic asset, allowing people inter- ested in tracing their family history to locate their headstones to individual graveyards, as well as being a source for historical analysis on Irish local and global history, for archaeologists and historians. The project evolved from archaeological professional surveys, focusing on studying the headstones, the burial practices and the representation of power and status, to community archaeology focused on graveyards as living heritage, with both tangible and intangible components. Local and family historians abound in Ireland and academic historians have formalised their approaches into what is called the History of Families - combining genealogy, social history and public history. We have brought the strengths of archaeological fieldwork to the study of the History of Families, whereby we can follow many family groups, via their gravestones, back to the 17th century and to the new communities they formed in distant countries.Centre of Irish Studies - Universidad de Granad

The use of GIS on large scale infrastructural projects in Ireland. Excavation, post-excavation and publication

The work described here has been carried out by the author in the period 2007-2008, working as GIS manager at Eachtra Archaeological Project.This presentation provides principles and examples for the application of GIS on large scale infrastructural projects, from the excavation, to the post-excavation and publication phases

Collecting and collating: managing data in archaeology

This short article gives an insight into how Eachtra Archaeological Projects, one of Ireland’s archaeological consultancies, marshals the evidence recovered during excavations, using a combination of database and Geographical Information System (GIS)

Where the researcher cannot get: open platforms to collaborate with citizens on cultural heritage research data

Muchos proyectos y grupos de investigación han llegado a acumular a lo largo de los años grandes cantidades de datos en bruto, por regla general acumulados y almacenados localmente, a veces en servidores locales o, más a menudo, en ordenadores personales. Los datos locales representan una oportunidad perdida para los proyectos de investigación, en particular en el campo del patrimonio cultural. La gran mayoría de estos conjuntos de datos, incluso aquellos que ya están en formato digital, permanecen ocultos, subutilizados e incompletos porque están vinculados al esfuerzo y los recursos limitados de un solo investigador o grupo de investigación específico. Esta contribución propone de pasar desde Datos Locales a Plataformas Abiertas, desde datos accesibles solo a un número restringido de investigadores a conjuntos de datos accesibles, editables y compartibles a distancia. Las plataformas en línea se ajustan perfectamente a las necesidades de un grupo de investigación que experimenta los límites de la recopilación y verificación directa de los datos o tiene la intención de ampliar el área potencial de la recopilación de fuentes. Para concretar esta propuesta, se describirán tres diferentes casos de estudio. Todos han sido desarrollados recientemente y son el resultado de la colaboración del autor con diferentes grupos de investigación en humanidades. Incluso si todos están relacionados con el patrimonio cultural, son muy diferentes con respecto al objeto de estudio. El núcleo principal de este documento reside en la discusión, donde se analizan las lecciones aprendidas al aplicar este enfoque, destacando sus beneficios y los problemas intrínsecos en el proceso.Departamento de Historia Medieval y Ciencias y Técnicas Historiográficas de la Universidad de GranadaMedialab UG

Good practices of social participation in cultural heritage

The REACH repository of good practices related to social participation in cultural heritage is a fundamental component of the Social Platform established by the REACH project. Carried out with the contribution of several project partners, this collection currently comprises 110 records of European and extra European participatory activities in the field of cultural heritage, with an emphasis on small-scale, localised interventions, but also including examples of larger collaborative projects and global or distributed online initiatives. This document provides a critical reflection on the results obtained in this mapping exercise carried out during the first year of the project’s life. Its aim is threefold: 1) to explain in detail the methodology adopted for the collection of good practices; 2) to offer a quantitative reading of the data gathered in the repository so far; 3) to analyse the most recurrent participatory approaches and public engagement strategies that emerge from the records included in the REACH dataset. The REACH repository has a global geographic scope and a multifocal thematic orientation. Due to this expansive reach, a variety of initiatives are recorded which capture the nuances of participation in action. Both quantitative and qualitative assessments of these records are included in this deliverable. While Chapter 2 is devoted to a detailed presentation of the overall approach, accounting for methodological choices, Chapter 3 contains the core of the analysis. It highlights five emerging patterns of participatory approaches, identifying areas of commonality that characterise a sizable proportion of the collected records. These areas are de fined in relation to specific groups of beneficiaries (minorities, indigenous communities and women) or in relation to modalities of participation (the role of the arts, digital platforms and archaeology). The results of the activities charted in this document can be summarised as follows: The REACH repository is vast but uneven: some countries are very well represented, others are underrepresented or absent. To address this imbalance more records will have to be created, while others are streamlined. However, even in its present shape, the REACH dataset provides illustrative examples of social participation that can be a source of inspiration to many. Through an attentive scrutiny of the participatory activities mapped in the repository, it was possible to identify some common tendencies that reveal how participation is implemented in a fairly broad selection of cases. The dataset of good practices has been published as an Open Data collection at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3415123, under the Free Culture Creative Commons License “AttributionShareAlike 4.0 International”, as a catalogue of resources that can support and stimulate other people’s work.European Commission: REACH - Re-designing access to CH for a wider participation in preservation, (re)use and management ofEuropean culture (769827

Historicgraves.com: the online graves and graveyards finder

Presentation of the Historic Graves project at the II International Seminar in Irish Studies, Universidad de Granada

The Spanish Republican Exile: Identity, Belonging and Memory in the Digital World

In recent years there has been an increasing number of websites dedicated to providing information about the Spanish Republican exile. These are generally created by exile descendants’ associations, research groups or private individuals. The recent growth of social networks, especially Twitter and Facebook, has simplified the exchange of this information and allowed the culture of the Republican exile to spread through the Internet and beyond, also influencing the scientific literature on this topic. This paper aims to analyse how the memory of the exile has grown through the Web with the passing of time and to examine the channels of communication that have become places of identity and belonging for the exiles, creating and enhancing a culture that permeates not only communities interested in the subject, but also people not directly linked to it. At the same time, it also aims to lay the foundations, for the first time, for the study of the memory of the exile in the digital domain. We start by recounting the burgeoning creation of websites and social media groups devoted to the republican exile, from 1998 to 2015, and link it with both contemporary Spanish political events and an in-depth look at recent Twitter activity. We then move to a fresh look at the digitised literature in Spanish on this topic present in the Google Books corpus, and finish by exploring the results from an online survey conducted in order to gain an insight into the motivations behind the increasing interest in the Spanish Republican Exile in contemporary global society.EUROPEAN PROJECT: Renewal, innovation and change: heritage and European society (RICHES)- FP7 Grant Agreement Nº: 612789. [http://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/111390_en.html

Andalucía y América. Plataforma colaborativa sobre patrimonio artístico iberoamericano

The interactive Web platform Collaborate with Andalucía and America is a pioneering collaborative initiative, involving researchers and civil society, to extend and improve a catalogue of artworks created by Andalusian artists in Latin America. Later on, it expanded its range of functionalities to become the centralized working environment of the research group promoting the initiative.La plataforma web interactiva Colabora con Andalucía y América nace como una iniciativa pionera de colaboración, entre investigadores y con la sociedad, para la ampliación y mejora del catálogo de las obras realizadas por artistas andaluces en América Latina. Recientemente, se amplía para convertirse en la herramienta centralizada de trabajo para el grupo de investigadores promotor de la iniciativa

Andalucía and America. Collaborative platform on Ibero-American artistic heritage

La plataforma web interactiva Colabora con Andalucía y América nace como una iniciativa pionera de colaboración, entre investigadores y con la sociedad, para la ampliación y mejora del catálogo de las obras realizadas por artistas andaluces en América Latina. Recientemente, se amplía para convertirse en la herramienta centralizada de trabajo para el grupo de investigadores promotor de la iniciativa.The interactive Web platform Collaborate with Andalucía and America is a pioneering collaborative initiative, involving researchers and civil society, to extend and improve a catalogue of artworks created by Andalusian artists in Latin America. Later on, it expanded its range of functionalities to become the centralized working environment of the research group promoting the initiative

30 aniversario de la World Wide Web “La investigación en la era digital”

Cumplir treinta años nos permite mirar las cosas con cierta perspectiva, y formular preguntas como: ¿Que impacto ha tenido la Web sobre la participación pública en la investigación histórica? ¿Que rol ha tenido el crowdsourcing en el campo de la historia digital y de la historia pública? ¿Cómo las tecnologías digitales han afectado la practica investigadora de los historiadores académicos y locales? El crowdsourcing es un metodo de investigación, un conjunto de procesos, no sólo una herramienta a disposición del investigador. Tal como lo conocemos hoy en día, es posible sólo gracias a la Red Internet y ha evolucionado con el tiempo al paso de los cambio que ha vivido el WWW.MedialabUG