Recording devices

The commission owned a substantial collection of Ediphone recordings on cylinders, obtained through purchases (e.g. the Fr. Luke Donnellan folksong collection, acquired 1939) or from full-time music collectors by the time Ennis was hired in 1942, and he began by transcribing them onto paper, later using the Ediphone as recording instrument for field work, some time between 1943 and 1944 perhaps (the circumstances are unclear). The device, despite its shortcomings, did help them to collect lyrics more efficiently.^[14]

The Ediphone was also used to record long folktales, although it could not be utilized in some cases, for example, some of the reciters were uncomfortable in its presence.^[15] The Ediphone was also prodigiously heavy, and together with a supply of cylinders, was cumbersome carrying across rough terrain.^[16] The commission could not afford a constant fresh supply of cylinders, so the recordings had to be reused and overwritten after being transcribed.^[17]

Ó Duilearga had since the very beginning harbored the design of using the gramophone as recording device, since each vinyl disc was not more durable and far more affordable than the Ediphone wax cylinders. The problem of the machine's cost, some $500, was obviated when the Edison Company made a present of it free of charge, and the gramophone arrived at the Commission in June 1940. Unfortunately, the Commission at this time was unable to adapt the device for field work, and as WWII had already started, it was also difficult procuring parts from America or England.^[18] It would not be until 1947 that the commission would figure out how to use the gramophone for collecting folklore in the field.^[19] The Commission decided to purchase the necessary sets of mobile recording equipment on its meagre budget, if only to carry out the project of recording the remnants of the Manx language (1948). This had been something of a pet project of Éamon de Valera's, though the politician had been rather sluggish in responding to the pleas of a budget for the proper equipment.^[19]

School's Collection

Among the Irish Folklore Commission's collections are written interviews recorded between 1937 and 1939. Known collectively as The School's Collection, these interviews were conducted by more than 50,000 school children from all primary schools in the South of Ireland. The 1,128 volumes include written accounts are sorted of daily life as well as regional folklore and stories as told by the interviewees.^[20] This was instigated by Seán Ó Súilleabháin and Séamus Ó Duilearga, who publicized the scheme and explained to teachers what folklore was and how to properly collect it.^[21] They met with principal teachers, who then explained to the children how to collect the folklore for the collection. From September to June, each week the teacher would choose a heading and read out the questions, and the children would copy it down and question their family members and neighbors. In June 1939, Ó Duilearga stated in his annual report that there were collectively 375,660 pages of books from the schools.^[22]

Dúchas Project

The Dúchas Project is an online crowdsourcing effort to digitize and transcribe the National Folklore Collection in order to make it accessible and searchable worldwide. Based online, the project includes (1) both digitized and transcribed volumes of the collection; (2) a search feature to find people, topics, and places mentioned in the collections; (4) an index of Irish surnames, and (5) numerous historical photographs.^[23]

Transcriptions of the collection are crowdsourced from around the world, and volunteers transcribe pages from the journal, allowing each page transcribed to become searchable from within the page itself and via internet search databases.