Digital Collecting
British Tabulating Machine Company plant at Castlereag, ALB500
The National Library of Ireland keeps safe our country’s cultural heritage by preserving born-digital and digitised collections.
Our mission is to ensure that valuable digital materials remain accessible for future generations, from modern cultural movements to historical archives.
Our work is vital in preventing crucial parts of Ireland’s digital history from vanishing forever.
We also aim to lead the way in making unique born-digital collections available to the public for generations to come.
Digital PreservationDigital preservation is essential to all of the National Library of Ireland’s digital collecting work, whether we're digitising physical collections, preserving born-digital content or archiving websites. It ensures that digital materials remain accessible and reusable over time, despite changing technologies. We safeguard Ireland’s digital cultural heritage for the future through expert care, trusted standards and dedicated infrastructure. |
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FAQs
Digitisation is the process of converting physical materials, such as manuscripts, books, photographs, tapes, video cassettes, or 3D objects, into digital formats to improve access and preserve them for the long term.
‘Born digital’ refers to any material that originated in digital format: anything from an email to a word processing document.
The NLI invests in people, systems, and processes to safeguard both digitised and born-digital materials, ensuring they remain accessible and usable, even as technology changes. Please see our Digital Preservation Policy to find out more.
Born-digital archives refer to non-published, archival materials that originated in digital form, such as emails, digital photos and files. They are the digital equivalent of manuscripts, literary papers and estate papers that the NLI has collected since its foundation. These collections are preserved to ensure long-term access.
e-Publications refers to published material that originated in digital form, such as e-books, electronic government publications and online newspapers.
Our Web Archive captures and preserves Irish websites, ensuring that vital online content, which might otherwise disappear, remains accessible for future generations.
Managing the sheer volume of digital content, including born-digital materials and websites, is a significant challenge for us. We prioritise the most culturally and historically valuable materials in line with the NLI’s Collection Development Policy. However, the volume of content continues to grow exponentially, and we continuously adapt our processes to manage these increasing demands.
The NLI is bound by Irish copyright law. Unlike the majority of EU national libraries, Irish legislation does not currently allow the NLI to systematically collect and make available all Irish websites, leaving a significant gap in the online historical record.
The NLI is committed to respecting copyright while also advocating for updated legislation that supports digital preservation and public access.
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