Archiving activist communities: The Archiving Reproductive Health project's work building relationships with grassroots feminist organisations.

ARH is working directly with volunteer organisations that campaigned to repeal the Eighth Amendment in Ireland, in order to archive their digital output for posterity. Building productive relationships with the organisations we work with, and communicating the importance of digital archiving to a non-specialist audience, is a fundamental aspect of our project. This presentation explores the ways we have developed and strengthened these relationships through a combination of training, networking and publications. The presentation will look specifically at three methods used by ARH to build and strengthen community relationships with grassroots feminist organisations:

1. Digital archiving training in the form of DRI Community Archive Training Course: This provided an overview of the principles of archiving in general and digital archiving in particular, and an introduction to using the DRI.

2. Stakeholder Advisory Group: This forum consists of representatives of each of the organisations whose data is being archived, as well as experts in the fields of research data.

3. Guide to digital archiving for volunteer organisations: This publication provides practical advice for non-specialists who wish to put some basic archival order on the material collected by the volunteer or community organisations they are part of."