Irish Traditional Music Archive
Taisce Cheol Dúchais Éireann
TO ORGANISERS OF IRISH TRADITIONAL MUSIC EVENTS WORLDWIDE
Dear Organisers of Concerts, Festivals, Classes, Summer Schools and Other Events,
Almost twenty years after its foundation, the Irish Traditional Music Archive has assembled the largest collection of Irish traditional music in existence, as detailed elsewhere on this website. We hold, for example, over 25,000 sound recordings, 16,000 books and serials, 9,000 melodies in digital form, 6,500 ballad sheets and pieces of sheet music, 10,000 photographs and negatives, 2,500 programmes, 1,100 videos and DVDs, 400 music manuscripts, etc., etc. And these items are catalogued on computer in great detail - an enormous body of information available free of charge to anyone who visits the Archive.
The collection therefore forms the most comprehensive picture of the world of Irish music, contemporary and historic, available anywhere. It is growing daily, and its information coverage improves daily. The Archive is a securely established Irish national institution, and a premier world centre for accessing and researching Irish traditional music.
Are the events you organise represented in the Archive's collection? If not, the remedy is in your own hands.
If you donate to the Archive whatever audio, visual and paper materials arise from the events you organise, we undertake to add them to our collections with your name as that of donor, to hold and preserve them indefinitely, to catalogue them, and to then make them available for listening/viewing or study to visitors to the Archive. We will scrupulously guard all your legal and moral rights in them, and will not make copies of them for others or otherwise use them without your prior written agreement. We will acknowledge donations on receipt, and forward queries from would-be purchasers to you.
We would be very keen to acquire such events materials as recordings, photographs, biographical details of performers and authors, artistic manifestos, and related publicity materials such as press releases, catalogues, flyers and posters, etc. - anything which would put the events in context and help people appreciate fully the meaning of what they are. We are interested in innovative and crossover publications as well as conservative and deeply traditional ones.
We urge you to make such donations primarily so that the art form of Irish traditional music worldwide, including your events, may be comprehensively documented. But there are certain practical advantages for events organisers in donating copies of their materials to the Archive and regarding such donations as part of their promotional activity. For one, the events will become known on a continuing basis to the specialist range of personal-interest, academic and professional researchers who use the Archive, and will thus promote attendances.
We look forward to receiving any donations you may make, and to cooperating with you in making an increasingly comprehensive public collection of Irish traditional music past and present.
Donations and queries about donations can be sent to the Irish Traditional Music Archive, 73 Merrion Square, Dublin 2 (tel. +353-1-661 9699; fax +353-1-662 4585; email donations@itma.ie).
Best wishes,
Nicholas Carolan
Director
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