Irish Traditional Music Archive
Taisce Cheol Dúchais Éireann
TO PUBLISHERS OF IRISH TRADITIONAL MUSIC WORLDWIDE
Dear Publishers,
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 your publications represented in the Archive's collection? If not, the remedy is in your own hands.
If you donate a copy of each of your publications to the Archive, 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 also be very keen to acquire associated publicity materials: photographs, biographical details of performers and authors, artistic manifestos, press releases, catalogues, flyers and posters, etc. - anything which would put the publications in context and help people appreciate fully the meaning of what they contain. 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 publications, may be comprehensively documented. But there are certain practical advantages for publishers in donating copies of their publications to the Archive and regarding such donations as part of their promotional activity. For one, the publications 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 generate sales.
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, Ireland (tel. +353-1-661 9699; fax +353-1-662 4585; email donations@itma.ie).
Best wishes,
Nicholas Carolan
Director
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