Digital Projects

Digital Projects

Fiontar & Scoil na Gaeilge is widely known for its research in publicly-funded, digital humanities projects for the Irish language. These are projects where information and digital technologies meet research and teaching on human culture.

In recent years staff in Fiontar & Scoil na Gaeilge have been leading the way in capturing Ireland’s rich linguistic and cultural traditions, making them available and accessible on digital platforms for students, researchers, various professionals and the general public, as well as the Irish diaspora.

All of our major team-based research projects have been delivered in partnership with Irish and European public bodies. Projects in the digital humanities which Fiontar & Scoil na Gaeilge is leading or participating in include:

  • Database of Irish placenames – logainm.ie – with mapping tools from Ordnance Survey Ireland. There is an Irish version for Irish speakers and an English edition which non-Irish speakers and many in the Irish diaspora will appreciate. The sound archive is an innovative feature of this database. Meitheal logainm.ie, a sub-site of logainm.ie, provides a crowdsourcing tool for pooling, storing and sharing data about minor placenames. Meitheal Logainm.ie gives users the opportunity to promote the toponymic heritage of the country in the digital age by mapping and sharing minor placenames online.
  • National Database of Irish Biographies – ainm.ie – in conjunction with publishers Cló Iar-Chonnacht. This features more than 1,700 people since the year 1560 who have had an involvement with the Irish language. There is an alphabetical listing as well as comprehensive cross-referencing, full-text search for keywords and phrases, timelines, and life attributes such as works, awards and events.
  • National Folklore Collection - dúchas.ie - Ireland’s oral tradition, which has been archived and digitised for a national and global audience in dúchas.ie. This online collection is currently being developed through a collaboration between DCU and UCD. The following resources have been made available on the website:

(i) All volumes of the Schools’ Collection (digitized and indexed) 

(ii) Search by people, topics and places

(iii) Meitheal dúchas.ie (transcription project)

(iv) Irish Surname Index

  • National Terminology Database – téarma.ie – in collaboration with Foras na Gaeilge. This is a 200,000+ listing of Irish-language terms in specialised and contemporary subjects.
  • Irish-language vocabulary for international terminology listing  – IATE or Interactive Terminology for Europe – in collaboration with the European Union. IATE is the intralingual web-based EU terminology service, ensuring easy access in one, convenient online source. Fiontar & Scoil na Gaeilge manages the Irish-language terminology content.
  • Gaois.ie - gaois.ie is a platform for publishing language and terminology resources developed by Fiontar & Scoil na Gaeilge, DCU. The resources available on this website are the results of externally funded projects as well as the work of individual researchers.
  • SpeakApps.eu – SpeakApps is a European-funded research project aimed at investigating, evaluating and developing a suite of online tools and tasks to facilitate oral language production in a range of European Languages (English, Irish, Catalan, Dutch, Polish, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Croatian, Finnish and Swedish). The aim of the project is to provide easy access to innovative, interactive online tools for learning and teaching languages, enabling people to practise second or even third languages, and providing them with an opportunity to improve their language skills through feedback. Fiontar & Scoil na Gaeilge is a member of a five-partner consortium of European Universities conducting this research.