Registering the Past: Preserving and Curating Student Teacher Registers at Dublin City University Library

Abstract

This paper presents a case study of the digital curation of two historically significant student teacher register collections held by Dublin City University (DCU) Library: the St. Patrick’s College Student Registers and the Church of Ireland College of Education Student Registers. Situated at the intersection of archival practice, digital preservation, and creative engagement with digitised collections, the paper outlines an approach to digital curation in which archival records are preserved, enriched, shared, and made accessible to diverse audiences. Both register collections predate the formal establishment of Dublin City University and reflect distinct educational traditions within Ireland. St. Patrick’s College, Drumcondra, operated as a Catholic teacher training college, while the Church of Ireland College of Education, Kildare Place was affiliated with the Church of Ireland (Anglican) tradition. Together, the registers document generations of student teachers and offer unique insights into religious affiliation, gender, social mobility, and educational change in Ireland. As primary source material, they hold considerable value for students, genealogists, historians, and cultural researchers. However, the physical fragility of the bound volumes and the limitations of access in paper form presented significant challenges for long-term preservation and wider scholarly use. DCU Library’s digital curation workflow began with appraisal and conservation assessment, followed by high-resolution digitisation of the original bound registers. Structured metadata and descriptive records were created to reflect archival context, provenance, and original order, supporting improved discovery and potential data reuse. Experimental workflows were also developed to assess the effectiveness of large language models (LLMs) in supporting the transcription of student name indexes, highlighting both the opportunities and limitations of automated approaches when working with handwritten historical records. Beyond preservation and discoverability, a central focus of the project has been the curatorial presentation of the registers. The collections have been curated both as complete digitised volumes and as individual high-resolution pages, enabling multiple modes of access and interpretation. A planned next phase involves collaboration with DCU’s School of History, inviting students to digitally interrogate the registers and explore broader historical narratives, including gender, religion, and educational change in Ireland, transforming static administrative records into dynamic access points for historical scholarship. The paper concludes by reflecting on challenges encountered, including the handling of fragile bound material, preparation for digitisation, and the alignment of collection-specific management practices with digital preservation ingestion requirements. It demonstrates how DCU Library’s exploratory and user-centred approach to digital curation can strengthen both preservation outcomes and scholarly engagement with digitised cultural heritage collections.