The Abbey Theatre digitization project in NUI Galway

Abstract

National University of Ireland, Galway and the Abbey Theatre finalized a partnership to digitize the archive of the Abbey Theatre in 2012. The partnership leverages NUI Galway’s position as a leader in theatre and digital humanities research and home to a range of theatre archives. The result of the project is the creation of a major international resource for teaching and research with Irish drama, literature, and history. The project addresses two particular challenges faced by the physical archive: preservation and access. It allows unprecedented levels of access to the archive which, until now, has been severely restricted due to space constraints and cataloguing backlogs. The archive contains more than a million pages, 500 hours of video and 2500 hours of audio. The material ranges from posters, programs, photographs, minute books to lighting plans, set and costume designs, sound cues, prompt scripts, and audio files.