DRI Becomes a Member of the Irish Museums Association

The IMA is a membership organisation for museum and heritage centres that ‘promotes excellence and best practice, encouraging the implementation of professional standards within the museum sector’ [1]. They also support their members by sharing ‘knowledge around current good practice’ through their events and training programmes [2]. 

Director of the IMA, Gina O’Kelly said:

We are delighted to welcome DRI to the Irish Museums Association (IMA)’s membership. As one of Ireland’s most important repositories, the DRI not only shares a common goal around the preservation of collections and the support of same through research and training, but also our values around inclusivity and public access to our cultural heritage. We have no doubt DRI’s input and thinking as part of our network will be of huge benefit to the development of our sector.

DRI Director Dr Natalie Harrower said: 

Joining the Irish Museums Association is a reflection of our commitment to best practices around the care and sharing of museum collections, as well as an indicator of our kinship with the museums’ sector as a whole. We look forward to exchanging professional knowledge with the IMA and its members, and together lifting the stewardship of digital content from museums to ever higher standards.

The DRI has preserved digitised museum collections since its launch, and membership of the IMA reflects DRI’s own growing membership of museums and cultural heritage institutions. It also reflects DRI’s continued aim of increasing internal and membership knowledge and understanding of professional standards and how we can best work to support members in their digital preservation needs. This membership marks an opportunity to share the many ways in which we can work with museums to protect and better disseminate their collections. This includes supporting the long-term preservation of their digital assets, improving accessibility and visibility of museum collections through Europeana, as well enhancing those collections through DRI-led projects like EnrichEuropeana+ (which supports the transcription of manuscript sources). 

The IMA has over 150 members that include museums and collection-based organisations that ‘hold a range of specialised conferences and forums, lectures, and CPD training’. [3] We look forward to attending more of these events as IMA members.

Notes

[1] Association, Irish Museums. “Standards & Guidelines.” Irish Museums Association. Accessed Jan 17, 2022. https://irishmuseums.org/text-pages/standards-guidelines.

[2] Ibid.

[3]  Association, Irish Museums. “History.” Irish Museums Association. Accessed Jan 17, 2022. https://irishmuseums.org/text-pages/history.