Connecting the dots: digital preservation and the Irish Historic Towns Atlas

The Irish Historic Towns Atlas (IHTA), a long-term research programme of the Royal Irish Academy (RIA), traces the built heritage and growth of Irish towns and cities, north and south. Historical research and cartography are combined to create each town atlas, which is output in various print and digital formats. A key principle of the programme is comparison and each of the thirty-two atlases that have been produced present maps at common scales and approximate dates, and historical information categorised under particular urban themes. Though this essential framework has emained consistent for all atlases since the project’s inception in the early 1980s, digital dissemination of the results is an evolving story, one in which long-term preservation plays an increasingly central role. The overarching IHTA collection was created within the Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI) in 2024, with its first sub-collection – the Digital Atlas of Cork/Corcaigh – launching in parallel. The non-standard formats and multiple layers of information associated with the maps and spatial data presented particular challenges while the scale and collaborative nature of the research raised questions for the accompanying metadata. As well as discussing some of the challenges we consider some of the opportunities that have resulted from the process, including new lines of enquiry, dialogues and innovations, which include an international dimension (IHTA is part of a wider European cooperation). This paper presents the digital preservation “story so far” for the IHTA and reflects on the connections that have emerged, expected and unexpected, both for the collection itself and its associated collaborations.