Launch of Archiving Reproductive Health Pilot Collections

Tuesday, March 8, 2022 - 12:00 to 12:45
Online

The Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI) is delighted to announce the launch of a series of pilot collections for the Archiving Reproductive Health project, in an online event on International Women’s Day 2022.
 
'Digital Preservation of Reproductive Health Resources: Archiving the 8th' (Archiving Reproductive Health) is a project funded by the Wellcome Trust and carried out by the DRI to preserve and publish digital materials relating to campaigns for reproductive justice in Ireland, especially during the campaign to repeal the Eighth Amendment in 2018.
 
Working with key stakeholders including the Abortion Rights Campaign, Together for Yes, Terminations for Medical Reasons, Coalition to Repeal the Eighth, and many others, ARH has gathered and preserved a selection of digital objects and research data, including social media, that tells part of the story of this historic campaign.
 
These collections will be launched online on International Women’s Day, 8 March 2022, at 12:00 pm. All are welcome to attend and registration is free.
 
The preservation and publication of these collections add significantly to our understanding of women's rights movements and access to reproductive healthcare in Ireland. Not only does the project allow for the preservation of fragile digital content, but it also makes way for further research developments in this field.
 
Material from the collections includes a series of photographs, videos, and design assets from three of the Abortion Rights Campaign’s Marches for Choice. 
 
Also included are design assets and press materials from Together for Yes, the national campaign to repeal the Eighth, as well as from the Coalition to Repeal the Eighth and the activist group Terminations for Medical Reasons. 
Examples of this material can be seen on DRI's website at https://www.dri.ie/launch-archiving-reproductive-health-pilot-collections-event
 
The project is also working on the exciting and challenging world of social media preservation. Material from the popular Facebook page ‘In Her Shoes’ will be available as part of the pilot collections. This collection will be added to over the course of the project, and ARH invites members of the public who contributed stories to In Her Shoes to find out more about the collection at iqda@mu.ie.
 
Research data in the form of oral history interviews with medics, campaigners, and women’s rights activists in Ireland will also be launched, provided by Re(al) Productive Justice Project: Gender and Disabilities, the Irish Qualitative Data Archive and a number of individual researchers.
 
Photographs of referendum campaign posters in Irish city streets in 2018 by researcher Louis Strange round out this exciting series of collections.
 
ARH warmly welcomes stakeholders, campaigners and members of the public to attend this launch. A brief guided tour of these important collections will be presented by Digital Archivist and Coordinator Clare Lanigan. Once launched, the collections will be available for viewing and research on repository.dri.ie.
 
More detailed information about the collections is provided below.
 

Register here - 

COLLECTIONS
 
Abortion Rights Campaign - Marches for Choice
This collection covers three of the Marches for Choice organised by the Abortion Rights Campaign, an all-Ireland campaign for free, safe and legal abortion in Ireland, founded in 2013. ARC was one of the three organisations that made up Together for Yes, the national campaign to repeal the Eighth Amendment in 2018. The collection includes photographs and videos from the Marches for Choice held in 2016, 2017 and 2018, as well as design assets such as posters, flyers and leaflets.
 
Together for Yes - Publicity Materials
This collection contains public-facing material such as posters, logos and flyers created by Together for Yes, the national campaign for a Yes vote in the campaign to repeal the Eighth in 2018. Together for Yes was made up of representatives of three organisations, ARC, the National Women's Council and the Coalition to Repeal the Eighth. The graphic design of the publicity material was designed by Language Communications.
 
Coalition to Repeal the Eighth - Publicity Materials
The Coalition to Repeal the Eighth is a broad umbrella organisation intended to bring together a wide range of civil society organisations that supported the repeal of the Eighth Amendment. The Coalition was one of the three organisations that made up Together for Yes. The collection includes publicity materials such as logos, images of merchandise and posters for public events hosted by the Coalition in the period 2015-2018.
 
Terminations for Medical Reasons - Publicity Materials
Terminations for Medical Reasons is an organisation that supports women, parents and families following diagnosis of a foetal anomaly, helps to destigmatise termination of pregnancy & campaigns for legal change. TFMR are a member of the Coalition to Repeal the Eighth and played a crucial role in the 2018 referendum. The collection includes publicity materials such as online banners, logos and press releases from the period 2015-2018.
 
Research Projects
The following projects have been deposited by DRI member the Irish Qualitative Data Archive (IQDA). If you would like to archive your research material in the IQDA please contact iqda@mu.ie
 
Physician Advocacy and Reproductive Rights: Doctors for Choice Ireland
This collection is comprised of oral history interviews conducted in 2019 by Sadie Bergen, a doctoral candidate in an interdisciplinary social science and public health program. The interviews are with current and former committee members of Doctors for Choice, an Irish pro-choice physician advocacy group. Physicians discuss how they became involved in reproductive rights advocacy; their impressions of the role of physicians in Irish abortion politics; their knowledge of Doctors for Choice’s changing strategies or priorities; and their subjective understanding of physician advocacy. These interviews will add to existing knowledge on the Eighth Amendment campaign in 2018 and physicians’ involvement within the movement.
 
In Her Shoes: Women of the Eighth
This collection contains links to a Facebook page where women shared their experiences of being refused healthcare, barriers to access, the experiences of travelling for healthcare abroad, illegally ordering pills online, and the emotional impact of these experiences. As a resource, it shares women’s stories and allows us to learn from them as a society. The stories captured the reality for many women living under the Eighth Amendment and offered an insight into the difficulties surrounding the illegality of abortion. It is hoped that a wide range of posts from January 2018 to June 2018 will be made accessible to researchers in this collection. A pilot collection of 32 stories have been added to the collection for this initial launch. Subject terms have been added to the posts for ease of access for researchers. Researchers are encouraged to be aware of potentially traumatic data within the posts and are advised to develop their own Self-Care Protocol while working with this dataset.  
If you contributed your story to the In Her Shoes page and wish to know more about this archiving project, please contact iqda@mu.ie
 
Posters and City Streets: The Linguistic Landscape of the Eighth Amendment Referendum Campaign
This is a visual collection containing 432 images of signage from the 2018 referendum to repeal the Eighth Amendment. It was collected during the week before the vote itself (May 2018) and includes images of campaign posters, graffiti, stickers and banners from a number of locations across the country. These images were taken by Louis Strange as part of his PhD research into the “linguistic landscape” of the 2018 referendum campaign, which looks at the use of language in public space in the lead-up to the vote.
 
Reproductive justice for people with disabilities - Re(al)productive Justice Project: Gender and Disabilities
Re(al)productive Justice Project: Gender and Disabilities is a disability rights and reproductive justice project based in NUI Galway. Disabled people are often denied the right to make reproductive decisions, including decisions about fertility, contraception, pregnancy, childbirth and parenting. This project explores the legal regulation and the real- life experiences of disabled people in Ireland in making reproductive decisions by inviting disabled people to tell their stories of making, or being denied the opportunity to make, reproductive choices for themselves. The 30 interviews in the pilot collection give insight into the experiences shared in this project, which will be used by Re(al)productive Justice to develop a toolkit for health and social care practitioners.
 
Repeal the Eighth and Reproductive Rights: Organiser Interviews - Oral History Interviews
Interviews with Repeal activists from the project “Sharing Best Practices in how Civil Society Organisations use the Internet in Organising and Building for Socio-Economic Rights and Trust”. This project looked at how organisations build trust and resolve conflicts in the age of social media. It looked at how in the Repeal campaign, digital tools were used to organise and build up the campaign, develop coalitions and connections, and also how the campaign dealt with the inevitable conflict that all movements have to handle. Twenty-five activists who worked on the Repeal campaign were interviewed. Researchers: Aileen O'Carroll, David Landy and Maire Ní Mhórdha.
 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY DOCUMENTATION
 
An Ethics Protocol for the project has been developed to ensure the quality and integrity of our research and archiving processes, to outline the ethical issues which arise from the project, and to ensure transparency in the project. The Ethics Protocol will be available as part of the ARH collections.
 
A Self-Care Protocol for Researchers has been developed by Dr Lorraine Grimes, the primary researcher on this project. The Self-Care Protocol includes practicalities for working with sensitive or traumatic data. It focuses on the potential to harm the researcher when working with sensitive data on reproductive health. This Protocol will be available as part of the ARH collections. Researchers working with collections within this project are encouraged to develop their own Self-Care protocols.
 
ARH have also developed a bibliography of sources in the area of research ethics and working with sensitive and potentially traumatic research in the field of arts, humanities, and social sciences. This bibliography is available at https://www.zotero.org/archivingreproductivehealth/collections/JRR6ZQP2
 

 
The 'Digital Preservation of Reproductive Health Resources: Archiving the 8th' (Archiving Reproductive Health) project aims to provide long-term preservation and access to at-risk born-digital content generated by grassroots women’s reproductive health movements during the campaign to repeal the 8th Amendment to the Constitution of Ireland. The project is funded by the Wellcome Trust and is running over 36 months from 1 January 2021. It is led by Trinity College Dublin, Maynooth University and the Royal Irish Academy in collaboration with a number of additional content partners.
 
The Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI) is a research performing organisation and national trustworthy digital repository (TDR) for Ireland’s humanities, cultural heritage, and social sciences data. We provide reliable, long-term, sustained access to social and cultural digital data and make this data openly available in line with the FAIR data principles of findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability.
 
DRI is headquartered at the Royal Irish Academy (RIA), with staff at RIA, Trinity College Dublin (TCD), and Maynooth University (MU). DRI is funded by the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (DFHERIS) via the Higher Education Authority (HEA) and the Irish Research Council (IRC).
The Repository is available at: https://repository.dri.ie/

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