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The Center for the Preservation of Irish-American Publications is a research unit of the CUNY Institute for Irish-American Studies. The Center is in the process of preserving and creating free access to about 2,000 books of Irish interest published with American imprints between 1820 and 1922.

Preservation Lab: The Center's lab contains a two scanning stations. The BookEye A2 station is used for the more brittle books. By scanning from above, it does not require the book to be pressed open on a flatbed glass. Software can correct for partial opening of tightly bound books. The light used by the scanner is UV and IR free to prevent further damage. For materials that are not yet brittle, we can scan at our second scanning station, the OpticBook 3600. The lab is controled for temperature, humidity, and damaging light.

Staff: Mr. Joshua Cochran and Mr. Ian McGowan, graduate students from our City College campus are presently working in the preservation lab at Center for the Preservation of Irish-American Publications. Mr. Seamus Scanlon, also affiliated with City College, CUNY, coordinates the Center's operations. Mr. Scanlon has 15 years experience in the area of technology and library sciences and has recently received an MS in Information Management. The Center is guided by the academic advice of Professor Thomas Ihde and Professor Janet Butler Munch, Lehman Library Special Collections Librarian. Professors Martin Burke (Lehman/Grad Center), Clare Carrol (Queens/Grad Center), and John Gillen (Hostos) have also provided input.

Cooperating Institutions: Iona College is presently lending books to the Center's project. Boston College and the College of the Holy Cross have also agreed to share substantial parts of their collections for the Center's project. We have also been receiving numerous contributions of Irish American books from the general public.

Presentations: The Institute has invited a number of researchers in this field to speak at Institute events. In the Fall of 2004, Prof. Matthew Jockers of Stanford University spoke on the topic of creating a hypertext corpus of literature on-line. Prof. Susan Schreibman of the University of Maryland spoke on the advantages and strategies to digitization. In Spring 2005, the Institute hosted a symposium focusing on the digitization of languages other than English. Speakers included Dr. Barbra Bruckner Higginbotham, Brooklyn College, Patrick Stevens, Cornell University, Ed Galloway, University of Pittsburgh, and Peter Flynn, University College Cork. The Institute also presented the first of its own findings in this line of research at a well-received panel at the national meeting of the American Conference for Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame in April 2005. Profs. Ihde and Carrol presented their findings in addition to the work of Dr. Roslyn Blyn-LaDrew of the University of Pennsylvania.

Publications: Ihde, T.W. (in press): "Irish Language Learning Textbooks Published in the United States: 1873-1904" New Hibernia Review.

Ihde, T.W. (in press): "Pedagogy-driven publishing in the Irish American Diaspora." In F. Sewell & A. Titley (Eds.), A History of the Irish Book, Vol II: The Printed Book in Irish 1567-2000. New York: Oxford University Press

Grants: Funding for this project has been received from the Lehman College Faculty Development Program (2003-2004), Mirrer Grant to CUNY Council on Foreign Language Study (2004-2005), and the American Conference for Irish Studies /ACIS (2005).