Archives of Irish America

NYU's Irish American Studies department, working with the NYU library system, created the Archives of Irish America in 1997. Judging by the list of collections that's posted on the website, the archive is still pretty small, although they are actively collecting. They've digitized a few things to create some online exhibits. There are text, images, and audio related to the Irish American Athletic Club and American response to hunger strikers in Northern Ireland c.1981, and there are some videotaped oral histories. The thing that caught my eye, however, is the exhibit The Spin on Ireland: Irish Music Record Cover Art Since 1950.

There are 23 album covers here- only the front cover is shown- grouped thematically and accompanied by text. These are albums that were played on a local radio show, so they look a little bit worn, but the scans are excellent in quality. Each cover shot gives some basic metadata about the album: title, artist, label, catalog no., country, year, and the cover photographer, if known. It seems to me that the photographers must still have copyright on these images, which range in age from the 1950s- the 1980s. I don't know whether the digitizers actually tried to contact anyone, or just took a chance and put it up. Interestingly, the archives copyrighted the oral history video that they put together. They also credit the copyrighted music used in the video. So they're definitely copyright-aware.

The record covers exhibit is satisfyingly kitschy and I think this archive has a lot of potential, but it looks to me like they don't really have enough (processed) collections to build a digitization program on. They have a lot of old Irish American newspapers, only one of which is on microfilm, so that might be a good place to start. The website does have links to other ethnic history archives and research guides, but none of these sites really has much in the way of digitized Irish American history materials or sources. I guess it's an idea that's still yet to come.