The Ricorso Galleries

Ricorso makes a great deal of literary and historical information available to Irish-studies scholars and interested readers everywhere in the world. To effect this it depends upon the optimum use of digital technology for literary and archival purposes. This is not only so in relation to the nature of the medium - that is, the website and its regi... ons. It is also true in regard to the very processes by which materials for the website are gathered, stored, processed, edited and formatted. Attention to the archival structure of the project is therefore a pervasive aspect of work on Ricorso, and a considerable degree of skill-sharing in this department is encouraged on the Project. The combination of laptops and modems along with scanners, zip-drives and smart-cards makes it possible to think in terms of a travelling Project Office. Given such resources, Ricorso might grow at a phenemenal rate; add contributions from scholars throughout the world and the increment becomes geometric. The difficulty here, however, is to arrive and and maintain a shared consensus on editing standards, formatting protocols and methods of selection. Some of these subject are address on the Styles & Formats pages [infra] though to a great extent the only adequate account of them is the website itself in its developing character as a set of practices and formats at the service of the Irish studies community. For that reason, familiarisation with the various regions of the website is the best guide to the project and its potential.Read More