The Galway launch of the Letters 1916 project took place from Monday 16 to Tuesday 17 of November 2015. The outreach event was made possible through a SFI Discover grant from Science Foundation Ireland (SFI). The National University of Ireland Galway kindly offered the John Hardiman Library for the event, which was a great success and attracted over 50 participants. The Galway event featured a drop in session on Monday 16 November that allowed members of the public to upload, transcribe and bring in their own items for digitisation.
Later that evening, the public was invited to the evening launch which featured a number of prolific speakers. With Professor Daniel Carey of the Moore Institute as the Master of Ceremonies, the talks, kindly given by Therese McIntyre, Dr. Sarah-Anne Buckley and Dr. Conor MacNamara, discussed a variety of topics including letters as oral history, childhood and family life in 1916 and the militarisation of commemoration.
The event was widely documented in the media, with coverage featured in the Irish Times, the TG4 news, Galway Bay FM and An Tuairisc.
The following day the Letters team ran a workshop for the transition year students of Coláiste na Coiribe. The students were kindly provided with a lab in the John Hardiman library and took part in the project by uploading letters. The students were given an overview of the project, a local history recap and an introduction to use of digital resources for history research purposes. The latter included a hands on session using online resources such as: Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge University Press / Royal Irish Academy and Census of Ireland 1901/1911, National Archives of Ireland
The Letters of 1916 wishes to thank the National University of Ireland, Galway for providing us with venues for the event and several letters from the Galway area. We also wish to thank all who turned out to digitise, transcribe and chat to the team.