This project will publish the Doegen sound archive of native Irish speakers from the early 20th century on the web. The archive consists of recordings made during the period 1928-31 and includes speakers from each of the four provinces, many of whom were among the last native speakers in their respective counties. Items recorded include stories, songs, prayers and miscellaneous items. Initiated by the Department of Education and organised by the Royal Irish Academy’s Irish Studies Committee, the recordings were made by Dr Wilhelm Doegen, Director of the Lautabteilung, Preussische Staatsbibliothek, Berlin, during the period 1928-1931. Dr Doegen had taken a lead role in recording the spoken word together with songs, in a range of languages, in the POW camps in Germany during the Great War.

A full set of 212 shellac records generated by the project was deposited with the Royal Irish Academy Library. The records are supplemented by archival data, viz. orthographic and phonetic transcripts relating to some of the recordings, as well as photocopies of speakers' personal data, the originals being held at the Lautarchiv at Humboldt-Universitaet, Berlin.

In the 1990s, the recordings were reformatted onto CDs. The Doegen project is now taking the remastered archive to the web and enhancing it with transcriptions, translations, linguistic analysis and contextual data. It is envisaged that this resource will benefit linguists, historians, musicologists, folklorists, local communities and the general public.

The Project Manager is Siobhán Fitzpatrick, Royal Irish Academy Librarian. Our lead academic partner is Professor Ruairí Ó hUiginn of Roinn na Nua-Ghaeilge, NUI Maynooth. The project has three years' funding for one post-doctoral reseacher and for three student interns each summer. Technical and other support is given by the Digital Humanities Observatory (DHO). A preliminary website making the audio files available was launched in autumn 2009.