Reflections on DPASSH 2026
What an incredible few days it has been in Belfast! The team at Wikimedia Community Ireland (WCI) is still buzzing with inspiration after attending the biennial Digital Preservation for the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities (DPASSH 2026) conference.
This iteration of the conference centered around an wonderfully creative theme: “Ready, Set, Preserve! Making Space for Play in Digital Preservation.” It brought together a vibrant mix of software developers, collection managers, curators, educators, researchers, and citizen scientists to explore how playful, open, and collaborative approaches can break down the complex technical barriers of digital archiving.
A Heartfelt Go Raibh Maith Agaibh to the Organisers
We want to extend our deepest gratitude to the visionary organisations and individuals who curated such a phenomenal, collaborative space for dialogue:
- The Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI): As the core organiser, the DRI continues to serve as an indispensable pillar for safeguarding Ireland’s social, humanities, and cultural heritage data.
- Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) & The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI): Huge thanks to our co-hosts in Belfast for providing wonderful facilities and a welcoming atmosphere.
- The Programme Committee: We are immensely grateful to the dedication of committee members from various institutions—including Beth Knazook, Adam Staunton, Ailie O’Hagan, and many others—who packed the 2026 DPASSH Conference Programme full of inspiring talks, interactive lightning presentations, and low-tech design games designed to tackle high-tech challenges.
- Keynote Speaker Somaya Langley: The Digital Preservation Manager for the Science Museum Group truly set the tone with an engaging look at embedding moments of playfulness as creative intervention during difficult archiving eras.
Bringing 10 Years of WCI Open Curation to the Stage
We were incredibly proud to have our very own Eugene Eichelberger (Volunteer Coordinator and Technical Consultant at WCI) represent us on the speaker lineup. Eugene delivered a talk titled: “Making Space for Play in Digital Preservation: 10 Years of Wikimedia Community Ireland.”
“Digital preservation is a collaborative team sport. Over the last decade, WCI has leveraged community play—through structured photography contests and edit-a-thons to systematically document the historical and linguistic fabric of Ireland.”
Eugene mapped out WCI’s innovative “Steering Pipeline,” which turns spontaneous citizen contributions into high-utility, structured digital archival records:
- The Problem: Combating common archival issues like massive photographic duplication of standard tourist hotspots, low-utility/shadowy angles, missing contextual metadata, or commercial spam.
- The Structural Fix: Using interactive mapping tools to highlight missing geography, shifting judging metrics toward encyclopedic value, introducing required metadata fields in upload wizards, and enforcing strict copy-left principles.
- The Archival Result: A clean, public-domain, educational repository providing high-clearance, detailed reference images that expand geographic coverage deep into rural Ireland.
Through this pipeline, our community has cataloged and open-licensed exquisite visual documentation of treasured heritage sites, such as Cloughoughter Castle (Cavan), Killone Abbey (Ennis), Menlo Castle (Galway), Ross Castle (Killarney), Bective Abbey (Meath), and Fore Abbey (Westmeath).
Furthermore, Eugene highlighted the phenomenal digital preservation footprint of Vicipéid (the Irish-language Wikipedia). Consistently ranking in the top 100 out of over 300 global language editions, Vicipéid boasts over 80,000 articles, 1.5 million monthly pageviews, and 2.5 million cumulative edits—serving as a thriving, living digital library of Irish language heritage built entirely by a dedicated community of volunteers.
Celebrating Our Strategic Institutional Partners
WCI’s open-knowledge initiatives succeed because we stand on the shoulders of incredible institutional partners across Ireland. We were delighted to highlight their ongoing contributions during the session:
- University College Dublin (UCD): Partners since 2014, working together to deliver critical Digital Citizenship training and ethical Wikipedia curation for undergraduate and postgraduate scholars.
- The Hunt Museum: A magnificent open-access trailblazer that facilitated the first-ever Irish institutional GLAM upload back in 2018, continuing to collaborate on Art+Feminism projects.
- Trinity College Dublin (TCD): Collaborating since 2017 to accelerate open-access library metadata uploads through themed Edit-a-thons and dedicated Wikimedian in Residence programs.
- Dublin City University (DCU): Driving minority language advocacy via an annual Simulated Translation Bureau for MA students and partnering alongside the ADAPT Centre to study Generative AI and Wikidata.
- National Library of Ireland (NLI): A vital champion for open access and historical preservation, hosting initiatives like the Rising Voices Workshop to roadmap the future of digital activism across the island.
Let’s Build the Future of Open Knowledge Together!
As a non-profit organization, our mission is to ensure that Ireland’s rich heritage, minority language materials, and cultural narratives are freely discoverable to the entire world—and to the AI systems that mediate tomorrow’s ground truths. But we cannot do this work in a silo.
Whether you are an archivist holding a niche collection, an educator eager to train students in critical media literacy, or a museum curator looking to amplify your institution’s global visibility, we want to play on the same team.
We invite all DPASSH attendees, heritage practitioners, and academic institutions to take the next step with us. Let’s collaborate to co-create digital preservation programs, facilitate high-impact outreach, and design modern open-access frameworks tailored to your unique archives.
👉 Discover how your institution can get involved via our WCI GLAM Partnership Hub.
