Welcome

The AURA network (2020-2022) was funded by a joint programme between the Irish Research Council and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) in the UK (more information about this programme HERE). Our Project Partners included the British Library; the National Library of Scotland; the National Library of Ireland; and the Irish Traditional Music Archive.

The AURA network was designed to unlock cultural assets that are preserved in digital archives closed to the public or difficult to access. The digital revolution has had a huge impact on archival collections: emails have largely replaced letters, government reports are now written in digital format. Yet, the vast majority of these born-digital records are inaccessible due to privacy, copyright or technical issues. By bringing together Digital Humanists, Computer Scientists and stakeholders (including policy makers), the network aimed to design solutions to the problem of inaccessible records in digital archives.

The network focused on three major themes, that were explored in each of three workshops: “Open Data versus Privacy” (Workshop 1); “AI and Archives: Current Challenges and Prospects of Born-digital archives” (Workshop 2); “AI and Archives: What comes next?” (Workshop 3).