PRESS RELEASE / PROJECT ANNOUNCEMENT

LITMUS
Irish Traditional Music Archive (ITMA) and Dr Lynnsey Weissenberger to lead ground-breaking traditional music information research project
ITMA is delighted to announce that it has been awarded funding of over € 187k to host one of the European Commission's inaugural Marie Curie Society & Enterprise Fellowships. Dr Lynnsey Weissenberger a postdoctoral researcher in Library & Information Studies from Florida State University - and a practising Irish traditional musician – will join ITMA in July 2017 to lead the two-year LITMUS project.

LITMUS (Linked Irish Traditional Music) seeks to improve searching and access to web-based Irish traditional music, song and dance resources through the development of a Linked Data framework. The project will utilise ITMA's extensive Irish traditional music collections as well as introducing Dr Weissenberg to an international network of Irish traditional musicians and researchers. She will also be seconded for six months to the Insight Centre for Data Analytics at NUI Galway. While tailored to Irish traditional music, it is hoped that this EC Horizon 2020 project will provide a working model for other European and non-European traditional musics.
The highly competitive Society and Enterprise Individual Fellowship scheme awarded funding totalling € 8 million to almost fifty projects across Europe, including six in Ireland.

Welcoming the inception of the project, ITMA Chairman Dermot McLaughlin said: "Sharing and increasing access to the materials of traditional music is at the core of what we do at ITMA. The LITMUS project, supported by the EU Horizon 2020 programme, will allow us to work with expert colleagues to design and test new ways of using data and technology to increase citizens' access to the richness of our living tradition throughout Europe and globally."

#Horizon2020 #MSCA #semanticweb #linkeddata #LODLAM #OpenGLAM

Notes to Editors:
Irish Traditional Music Archive (ITMA)
ITMA is a national reference archive and resource centre for the traditional song, music and dance of Ireland. At its premises in Dublin and online it offers access, free of charge, to the largest multimedia collection in existence dedicated to contemporary and historical Irish traditional music. Visitors are welcome to listen, view and browse thousands of sound recordings, videos, books, images and manuscripts which have been collected and preserved by ITMA since 1987. It is funded primarily by the Arts Council of Ireland/An Chomhairle Ealaíon and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.
http://www.itma.ie/

The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions are a European Commission Funding Programme which supports researchers at all stages of their careers, across all research disciplines and in all employment sectors. In 2017 almost 1,200 researchers were awarded grants totalling €218 million, including the new Society and Enterprise Fellowships. Advice for Irish applicants can be found at the Irish Marie Skłodowska-Curie Office in Dublin.
http://www.iua.ie/irish-marie-curie-office/introduction/

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Maeve Gebruers | Printed Materials & PR Officer | Irish Traditional Music Archive
73 Merrion Sq. Dublin 2, D02 WK75, Ireland | +353 1 661 9699
maeve.gebruers@itma.ie | @ITMADublin | www.itma.ie