Research Newsletter - Issue 109: Open Research in Action
Meitheal Dúchas: how and why half a million pages of local history and folklore were transcribed by volunteers
Dr Úna Bhreathnach, Dr Brian Ó Raghallaigh, Dr Gearóid Ó Cleircín
Fiontar & Scoil na Gaeilge
Meitheal Dúchas is a folklore transcription platform. It is a key element of the Dúchas (National Folklore Collection Digitization) Project. Users of the site, the public, are invited to transcribe, on a voluntary basis, 20th century manuscripts (many written by children) held by the National Folklore Collection UCD. Meitheal Dúchas is one of the largest folklore transcription platforms in the world with circa 445,000 pages transcribed by over 6,000 members to date.
Open Research Practices
Open research practices (such as participatory methods and public engagement) have been adopted to ensure easy access to the platform, to increase community participation and to ensure that material is accessible to as wide an audience as possible.
To encourage public engagement, the transcription box is open, accessible and attractive and the design of the platform is deliberately simple. The team have also sought to learn more about those who have engaged in transcription, especially the 60 or so ‘super’ members of the Meitheal, those who have transcribed more than 1,000 pages each. They plan to openly share the results from a survey and from in-depth interviews, exploring the members' reasons for joining; how, when and why they did transcription; and what they gained from the experience.
By learning more about the motivations of these ‘super transcribers’ they will gain insights into the success of Meitheal Dúchas, and more broadly the ways in which the public engage with digitised folklore collections, learnings that could be applied to similar crowdsourced initiatives in the future.
The spirit of openness will be applied to the transcribed corpus which will be made available for research, and there are plans to publish an API for ease of access. The transcribed Irish-language material will be added as a subcorpus of the Corpas.ie National Corpus of Irish in 2026 for research purposes.
Impact
Usage statistics for Dúchas are generally over 500k hits per month. The platform has had a huge impact in making local stories from the 1930s available to the interested public, leading to several radio and TV programmes.
Meitheal Dúchas has had an impact in the classroom (primary, secondary and tertiary), with older participants, and with the Irish diaspora.
The stories are regularly discussed in the media; e.g. ’An Irishman’s Diary’ (28.02.18); Irish Times Magazine (17.03.18); Home School Hub (2020); John Creedon (book An Irish Folklore Treasury (2022) based on Dúchas) and are source material for other projects (e.g. Young Scientist Competition 2019, classroom projects).
Open Research aims to increase openness, transparency and reproducibility across all parts of the research lifecycle. It is considered beneficial to all involved in the research process - funders, researchers, policymakers, and to society as a whole. DCU actively supports and facilitates researchers to practice Open Research. The DCU Open Research Steering Group is leading the University's implementation of the NORF Action Plan 2022-2030 and working more broadly to foster a culture of openness in all aspects of DCU research.
Further information and links to useful resources can be found on the DCU Open Research Website.