The ANSEO project - digitally saving our school records

The ANSEO project was founded in 2015 by Liam Alex Heffron of NUI Galway, to digitally preserve the statutory records from national schools in North Mayo and West Sligo. Under Liam’s direction, and in cooperation with the local schools and volunteers, over 750,000 images have been taken to date (with help from participants in the Moygownagh Community Employment Scheme and Mayo North-East Rural Social Scheme). With support from Mayo County Council, this is the largest crowd-sourced project of its kind in Ireland or the UK.

Our aim is to see the ANSEO project to be part of a national initiative to create a network of local community archives to gather, hold, digitise and display the local historical records from not just national schools, but parish registers, GAA clubs, and family collections.

In April 2019, with the ANSEO project, Liam won the National University of Ireland, Galway EXPLORE Campus award for innovation in Digital Humanities. It is intended that these surrogate records will be digitally archived for future heritage and historical use.

Our dream is to see visitors come to these archives to discover more of their ancestors and heritage, consult with the record collections and learn about their context and construction with interactive displays and workshops. This also provides a hub for tourism, adventure and heritage protection

It is also envisaged that the archive provide a point of spiral access for the public to then seek, visit and engage with local and landscape history by tracing the origins of particular records in their schoolhouse, parish, church, townland and family context.

For information on the work of the project and future plans please email anseo.info@gmail.com