Experiences Preserving 3D data at the Digital Repository of Ireland

During the current pandemic, we have seen some wonderful examples of how communities can come together in the face of adversity. We’ve seen everything from viral videos of Italians in lockdown singing from their balconies, images of teddy bears in windows, and a huge range of community efforts to help vulnerable people in their areas. One great initiative that emerged among maker and tech groups was the 3D printing of face shields, at a time when personal protective equipment for health professionals was in short supply world-wide.

As part of this support, DRI decided to use our preservation infrastructure to capture and preserve some of the 3D printing models that maker groups have been using to create face shields for healthcare workers. In fact, our software engineer Mashal went one step further and designed our own 3D face shield. The face shield model is open source and can be viewed and downloaded from the Repository 

Read more about DRI's experiences preserving 3D data on the DRI blog