Abbey Theatre Digital Archive @ NUI Galway

The world’s largest-ever theatre archive digitisation project

1979 Niall O'Brien, Stephen Rea & Kate Flynn in Aristocrats, Brian Friel

Key facts

600 playwrights	1 million pages
1,500 plays	500 video hours
4,000 actors	2500 audio hours
70,000 characters	110 years

Introduction

The Abbey Theatre is one of the world’s leading national theatres and has played an enormously significant role in the development of dramatic literature and theatre practice internationally.  NUI Galway is digitising the archive of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, Ireland’s national theatre, in order to preserve and widen access to a major aspect of the world’s cultural heritage.
This project protects its legacy for future generations, and is the largest drama and theatre archive digitisation project ever undertaken worldwide, publishing over one million pages when complete. The archive will be updated annually as recent material is added or embargo periods expire.
This is a pioneering collaboration between an arts organisation and a university.

The Archive

The archive features papers relating to all four of Ireland’s Nobel Prize Winners for Literature: W.B. Yeats, G.B. Shaw, Samuel Beckett, and Seamus Heaney. It also features original material pertaining to such major writers as James Joyce, Eugene O’Neill, and Sam Shepard – while preserving material about the current generation of Irish playwrights, such as Brian Friel, Thomas Kilroy, Conor McPherson, Marina Carr, and many others. It also acts as a record of the development of Irish democracy during the twentieth century.
The digital archive is accessible at the Archives and Special Collections Reading Room in the Hardiman Research Building at NUI Galway.
Please call +353 91 493476 or email us using specialcollections@nuigalway.ie

Progress to Date

•    More than 400,000 pages digitised
•    Over 180,000 pages and audio files available
•    Programmes, prompt scripts, set designs, lighting designs, admin files
•    Available at NUI Galway
•    Range of search, display and citation options, with assistance available

Next Steps

•    Digitise further materials, e.g. photographs, audio, video, posters
•    Release of more files following embargo expiry, editorial review
•    Develop communications, alerting services
•    Maximise academic and other uses of archive
•    Build user community and partnerships

Archives at NUI Galway

Theatre collections at NUI Galway include the papers of Thomas Kilroy, the archives of companies such as the Druid Theatre, Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe, the Lyric Players Theatre in Belfast, and the Shields Family Collection, featuring the Abbey actor Arthur Shields.

Web library.nuigalway.ie/archives
Blog nuigarchives.blogspot.ie
Twitter @nuigarchives