Welcome to the website of Joan of Archives.

This year I completed an MA in Digital Arts & Humanities in UCC. Due to Covid, it was undertaken mostly online but I managed to make the trek from my home in Tipp to Cork on a handful of occasions. During the past 12 months I’ve happily wandered down some fascinating Digital Humanities rabbit-holes, and you can see what I’ve been up to on this website.

One of the topics that I knew nothing about before I started this course was developments in digital art. In particular I was only vaguely aware of Non-Fungible Tokens, which are driving some remarkable innovation – and sales – in the field. A fleeting conversation led me to explore NFTs in much greater detail and you can read my overview of NFTs on my Pecha-Kucha page. After doing my initial research I decided to create my own NFT and you can read about my experience with that on my Digital Artefact Creation page. And finally, in the spirit of the old adage ‘See One, Do One, Teach One’, I have completed a step-by-step guide to NFT creation for curious readers on my NFT Create page.

I’ve also had a chance to get stuck in to one of my favourite topics while undertaking this course. It’s not everyone’s cuppa tea but if you’re interested in the ramifications of copyright legislation in the realm of digital publishing you could do worse than to read my Copyright essay to get an overview of where things stand in 2021. I share some more thoughts on copyright in a piece about the GLAM (Galleries, Archives, Museums and Libraries) sector here and I briefly consider a few other issues such as the importance of owning one’s own web domain here, and the treatment of the Internet’s Own Boy, Aaron Swartz.

The Munster Women Writers Project was one of the first Humanities projects with a digital output to be undertaken in Ireland. A literature and bibliographic research project, it was undertaken in UCC from 1999. As part of my course work I sought to bring much of the material gathered by the project back in to the digital realm, and you can see some early signs of progress in the timeline I’ve created.

My online presence can also be found on Twitter and Flickr.

Note: I am currently undertaking a pilot project to make the data from the Munster Women Writers Project available online again. A work-in-progress, it can be accessed here http://munsterwomenwriters.joanofarchives.com/.