Gavin Carville talks about Divided Society, a project to digitise materials such as posters, journals and newsletters from the times of the troubles in Northern Ireland which together offer a vital, ­multi-layered insight into the atmosphere at the time.

THE Linen Hall Library in Belfast has been collecting material relating to the Northern Ireland conflict and peace process since the late 1960s.

The Northern Ireland Political Collection began in 1968 when Jimmy Vitty, then ­Librarian, was handed a civil rights leaflet. He kept the leaflet and brought it to the Linen Hall, sensing material of this kind should be preserved for the future, given the political unrest at the time. 

Over the decades that followed, the collection grew as library staff collected material and took donations from political groups and the wider general public. The library became a repository where often sensitive or controversial material could be deposited and preserved. The collection comprises books, posters, pamphlets, objects, rare primary material, and thousands of journal titles. Researchers and students from around the world come to the library to consult the collection in a safe, neutral space. 

Funding for digitisation

In 2016, the Linen Hall was awarded a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to digitise a part of the collection. The focus would be 1990 to 1998, a period which saw a series of ceasefires, visits from President Clinton, and ended with the Good Friday Agreement. Journal titles and posters would be digitised and made available from a new website freely available in the UK and Ireland and through subscription to the rest of the world.

Taking stock

To define the scope of the project, a stock-take was conducted to determine the amount of material to be scanned. This was vital in costing the scanning budget and also determined the number of cataloguers required. A list of the journal titles was ­created with details on their publisher, number of issues, average page number, and whether the content was authored or not. Technical details around a file-name structure for each journal and its subsequent digital surrogate were also required.
The journals were published from a wide variety of sources including political parties, community groups, voluntary groups, pressure groups, local and national government, and paramilitaries. 

Key themes

Browsing the articles, issues began to emerge and these have been distilled into 24 key themes. Each of these themes have related categories nested inside, so users studying, for example, prisons can find categories on the hunger strike, the Maze prison, and issues around prisoner status. This content can be full-text articles, but also posters along with audio and video material.   

Searching the material in this way could only be possible with clear, ­dependable metadata. As the ­digitised images began to arrive, three ­cataloguers started adding Dublin Core metadata so that every image could be easily retrieved and its contents fully searched. Good metadata is a key part of the process, ­enriching the archive and providing users with a variety of ways to find and retrieve material. 

Permissions

A critical part of the project was ­obtaining permission from the ­materials’ copyright holders. With over 500 ­journal titles and 800 posters, this was a painstaking process, but the ­Intellectual ­Property Office’s ‘Due Diligence’ ­guidelines were a great help. Many of the publishers had ceased to exist, but with detailed research we were able to contact and gain permission from hundreds of publishers and organisations. Many were delighted to have their work preserved and made accessible to a global ­audience and the project was thrilled at the ­goodwill and support it received.

All of the political parties in Northern ­Ireland granted permission for their ­material to be used. These journals and newsletters have never been digitised before and provide users with a broad understanding of how each party was responding to and commenting on political developments.    

If no copyright holder was found, we went about acquiring Orphan Work Licences. Again the Intellectual ­Property ­Office was vital in helping with this, requesting a detailed record of the due ­diligence process before granting the ­seven-year licence. These items now ­appear on the Orphan Works Register.

Understanding of the time

For researchers and students, much of this material will be vital in understanding the atmosphere in Northern Ireland at the time, the desire for peace, the ongoing violence, and the issues that prevented a settlement. They also provide a fascinating look at the social history of the country, as many of the community journals reflect the day-to-day lives of ordinary people. The political posters also demonstrate how visual material was used to convey political messages. This material is supplemented with an audio and video gallery and ten exclusive essays. Each essay focuses on one of they key themes, continuing the curated approach to the content.

The Divided Society project began in ­August 2016 and launched in January 2018. We hope the resource will be an invaluable tool for anyone interested in the history of the UK and Ireland, along with subjects like terrorism, post-conflict studies, and peace and reconciliation studies.