DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17244524
title: The Letters Dataset (from Seán Ó Riada Descriptive List in the Seán Ó Riada Collection/Bailiúchán Sheáin Uí Riada)

description: Collation of data from a finding aid for the Seán Ó Riada Collection / Bailiúchán Sheáin Uí Riada at the Boole Library, University College Cork. 

Dataset originally created 2015 UPDATE: Packaged on 01/10/2025

I. About this Data Set

This data set is a result of close reading conducted by Patrick Egan (Pádraig Mac Aodhgáin) at the Boole Library, University College Cork, letters relating to Seán Ó Riada.

Research was conducted between 2014-2018. It contains a combination of metadata from searches of the Seán Ó Riada Collection finding aid (or "descriptive list"), relating to letters that were addressed to Seán Ó Riada at his residences in Dublin and Cork. The PhD project was published in 2020, entitled, “Exploring ethnography and digital visualisation: a study of musical practice through the contextualisation of music related projects from the Seán Ó Riada Collection”. You are invited to use and re-use this data with appropriate attribution.

The "letters" dataset consists of 625 rows.

II. What’s included? This data set includes:

The letters dataset – a .CSV containing                         ItemNumber    ManyLetters    DateStart    DateFinish    IsRange    Ambiguity    NoOfItems    Description    SeeAlso    NameWithFormula    ToORiada    FromORiada    BetweenOthers    TitleOfCompany    Address    Geo    IrishLangAddress    ORiadasAddress    FromORiadasAddress    AddressBetweenOthers    IsLetterThis .csv file is the direct export of the collated data from an SQl database

III. How Was It Created? These data were created by daily visits to the Seán Ó Riada Collection, archives in Ireland, and online databases over the course of four years, through close reading, description, and general collection of metadata.

IV. Data Set Field Descriptions

a) The "letters" dataset field descriptions

ItemNumber  - the corresponding item number in the finding aid  ManyLetters - if more than one letter was noted in that item number   DateStart  - the date that the first or the single letter was sentDateFinish  - the date that the last or the single letter was sentIsRange - if there is a range entered by the archivist    Ambiguity - if the date for the letter is ambiguousNoOfItems - the number of archived documents within that item number  Description - description of the letter as given by the archivist   SeeAlso - where letters in different item numbers are related to each other   NameWithFormula -  the result of a formula which was used to isolate names that appeared after the word "from" in the description  ToORiada - a column filled in if letters were sent to Seán Ó Riada, with the value of who it was  FromORiada - a column filled in if letters were sent from Seán Ó Riada, in some cases letters that were sent from Seán Ó Riada were held in this collection    BetweenOthers - a column that denotes where letters were sent between other colleagues, and not Seán Ó Riada  TitleOfCompany - If a company representative had contacted Seán Ó Riada, this column featured the entity or the name   Address - the address where the letter was sent from   Geo - the coordinates in Latitude and Longitude for the letter address    IrishLangAddress - the Irish language address if letter address was written in the Irish language    ORiadasAddress - the address given for Seán Ó Riada or others, if written on the description of a letter by the archivist   FromORiadasAddress - the address for Seán Ó Riada, if the letter was sent from Seán Ó Riada's residence    AddressBetweenOthers - the addresses recorded by the archivist as being between other colleagues of Seán Ó RiadaIsLetter - in some cases telegrams were sent, so this field denotes where a letter was sent

V. Rights statement The text in this data set was created by the researcher and can be used in many different ways under creative commons with attribution. All contributions to this PhD project are released into the public domain as they are created. Anyone is free to use and re-use this data set in any way they want, provided reference is given to the creator of this dataset.

VI. Creator and Contributor Information

Creator: Patrick Egan (Pádraig Mac Aodhgáin)

VII. Contact Information Please direct all questions and comments to Patrick Egan via his website at www.patrickegan.org. You can also get in touch with the Library via UCC website.