www.dippam.ac.uk
Using dippam for teaching
Prof Peter Gray, QUB
What is dippam?
• A virtual library of historical sources
• Available over the web to all users, globally and for free,
at www.dippam.ac.uk
• Fully searchable and browsable documents
• Contains multimedia resources – texts, images and
audio
• A key resource for recovering the history of modern
Ireland and its overseas diaspora
• Particular focus on migration from Ulster
• Collections bring together narratives of migration from
the 18th century to the recent past
A collaborative project
The dippam partnership:
QUB Development work: Prof Peter Gray (PI), Dr Ricky
Rankin, Gavin Mitchell, Conail Stewart, Cormac
O’Donnell, Mark McCalmont
Web hosting by QUB Information Services
CMS Development work: Dr Brian Lambkin, Dr Paddy
Fitzgerald
UU Development work: Dr Johanne Devlin Trew
LNI Development work: Joe Mullan
LNI Promotion: Deirdre Nugent
And funded by:
AHRC Digital Equipment and Database Enhancement
for Impact (DEDEFI) award 2010-11
Thanks also to: Professor Liam Kennedy (QUB) and Professor Marianne Elliott (University of Liverpool) for assistance in
development of VMR; Julian Ball and Richard Wake (University of Southampton) for assistance with development of EPPI;
Lorraine Tennant, formerly data collection officer of IED 1988-2007, and to Scotch Irish Trust and DCAL ,for support in
development of IED; Paperjam (Belfast) for design work.
www.dippam.ac.uk
What does dippam include?
dippam brings together three different but complementary databases:
(1) EPPI: Enhanced British Parliamentary Papers on Ireland (1801-1922)
A comprehensive full-text digital archive of over 14,000 official publications
relating to Ireland from 1801-1922. Full text scans with OCR transcripts.
Initially digitised as ‘EPPI’ 2002-5 by University of Southampton (AHRC
funded); now restored and enhanced
(2) IED: The Irish Emigration Database (18th-20th centuries)
Created by CMS Omagh since 1988 from documents held by PRONI and other
NI libraries / private donors; now universally available over the web. Mostly
transcripts with some images and attachments.
(3) VMR: Voices of Migration and Return (later 20th century)
Created by AHRC-funded oral narratives project at QUB/CMS 2004-8; MP3
audio files now searchable and available to researchers
A central theme: Ireland’s migration
experience
• EPPI – documents the social context of Irish emigration 18011922: social conditions, famine, population pressures; internal
migration. Also records government regulation; debates over
‘colonization; and state assistance. Also some transcribed
voices reflecting direct migration experience
• IED – a wide range of sources, but at heart the narratives of
family migration experience captured and preserved in the
emigrant letter and memoir
• VMR – over 90 personal narratives of emigrants and return
migrants from Ulster – captured and available on digital audio.
A link between the historical experience captured in EPPI and
IED, and our own times and experience.
Using EPPI
Search by keyword in fulltext or title
Restrict search by date ranges
Restrict by type of document
• http://www.dippam.ac.uk
Other online government records:
• Hansard 1803-2005:
http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/
•
Oireachtas debates 1919-2010
http://www.oireachtas.ie/