About the Comhaltas ArchiveWe have included the answers to a number of common questions below, but please email us at archive@comhaltas.ie with any further questions or concerns you may have. For more information about the legal and ethical issues governing the Comhaltas Archive, please take a look at our Terms & Conditions.
What is the Comhaltas Archive?The Comhaltas Traditional Music Archive is a national project of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann, based within the eight Comhaltas Regional Resource Centres of Ireland. The Comhaltas Archive aims to preserve, organise and make available materials relating to Irish cultural traditions, including Irish music, song, dance, language and history. The Comhaltas Archive has a special place in the world of Irish traditional music, as it contains many unique and important audiovisual recordings of key traditional musicians. In addition to audiovisual materials, the Archive contains documents, images and periodicals related to Comhaltas and to Irish culture. What material is in the Comhaltas Archive?The Comhaltas Archive contains Irish cultural material collected throughout Ireland and abroad, including audiovisual recordings, tunes, images, documents and periodicals. Many of the holdings are held at Comhaltas Head Office, and significant local collections were developed in Clare, Sligo and elsewhere. We continue to make original recordings for the Archive at concerts, fleadhanna and music festivals, and we gratefully accept donations of suitable content from private collectors. New indexes and materials will continue to be added over time. What if I have a concern about an item in the Archive?If you would like to suggest the name of a person associated with an archive item, or to name a tune, or to suggest a keyword for an item, you are encouraged to use the "suggest" links provided in the left-hand-side of the results pane. Through these suggestions the Comhaltas Archive will continue to improve over time. If you have concerns about an attribution, we have established a claim procedure for any item that you might have concerns about as a performer, collector or heir. Once you have notified us in writing of your concern, the item will immediately be removed from public view, and we will begin a process of working toward a resolution with you and any other affected parties. Our goal is to resolve all such disputes amicably through mutual discussion, with a presumption of good faith on both sides. Please contact us via post or send an email to archive@comhaltas.ie with any concerns, and we will get in touch with you to resolve the issue. How Is the Archive available to me?The best way to experience the Comhaltas Archive is to call into one of our eight Regional Resource Centres, located in North and South Dublin, Cashel, Ennis, Gurteen, Dundalk, Mullingar and Omagh. A workstation has been provided for your use, and an experienced member of staff can be made available to discuss your research question and guide you through the collection. Within the Regional Resource Centres, you can search and browse the full collection, and watch or listen to our audiovisual items in full. The catalogue of the Comhaltas Archive is also available online at ComhaltasArchive.ie. This web interface lists the items contained in the Archive, and access to this listing is freely available. For audiovisual items in the collection, 30-second samples are also available on the ComhaltasArchive.ie website, and 'watermarked' versions of images can be viewed. If you elect to agree to the archive's statement on Ethics, Terms and Conditions and to provide your contact details to Comhaltas, you will be entering into a legal agreement with Comhaltas, committing you to respect the rights and reputations of the artists presented in the Archive. Once you have made this agreement, you will be able to see and hear our audiovisual items at their full length through the website. However, all sensitive audio and visual material will still be 'watermarked', meaning that a short interruption in the sound/video will occur every 30 seconds. We hope you will understand that this minor inconvenience helps to protect the commercial and other interests of the performers represented in the Comhaltas Archive. May I have a copy of some Archive material?You may obtain copies of Archive items for personal, non-commercial use with the permission of a Comhaltas Archivist. There may be a nominal administrative fee charged to cover duplication and posting of such copies. Of course, musicians represented as performers within the archive and their families are welcome to copies of items featuring them, while other such determinations will be made with reference to the wishes of the performers and contributors involved. You may make copy requests in writing to a Comhaltas Regional Resource Centre, or via the ComhaltasArchive.ie website. To use the website to ask for this permission, we ask that you create a Playlist containing your desired items, and select the "Request a Copy" option on the Playlists page. You will be asked to provide some further details of the request, including the nature of the intended non-commercial use. If you would like to make use of archival material for a commercial purpose, these rights may require more extended negotiation with the performers and contributors involved. Queries regarding commercial uses of archive items should be addressed to the Comhaltas Head Office in Monkstown. Our contact details: Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann (Archive) |
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