The Archive Project – make your views count

NCBI’s Archive Project will allow people who experience sight loss to provide their views and experiences on a wide variety of topics.

Have you something to say? Then tell us your story and let us Archive it.

If we want things to get better for vision impaired people, then trying to make it happen by collecting statistics isn’t enough. The real impact on making change happen is people’s own stories.
NCBI are in the process of creating an Archive that will specialize in material about life in the Republic of Ireland for partially sighted and blind people.

Many studies of people’s experience of sight loss, particularly those using survey and statistical methods, have barely scratched the surface of the personal, social and economic challenges. While researchers using survey methods can ask large and varied samples of people about the specific areas they are researching, they are unable to explore the complexity of the practical and emotional impact, along with the meaning and changes that sight loss can have on lives, views, activities and ambitions and that of the individual’s family and social circle.

Other methods have been used to attempt this but most often provide only a ‘snapshot’ or one dimensional perspective and are unable to show how these might change over time as society and economic and political changes take place and the individual’s own situation changes.
NCBI’s Archive Project is an attempt to ask the people who experience sight loss themselves to provide their views and experiences on a wide variety of topics, gathered over time and to be made available to researchers, students, policy advisers, social commentators, writers, etc. This Project will also be linked to Reminiscence work with older adults who have been blind or partially sighted for a substantial part of their lives. NCBI also hopes to further this initiative by setting up groups who will meet either informally or within an adult education framework for such activities as autobiography and creative writing and recording of reminiscences.

We hope that The Archive will become recognised as a valuable resource by not only NCBI and its users and the wider population of people who are blind or partially sighted, but other disability organizations, research and campaigning groups and educational and training institutions.

To launch the Archive, twelve people from around the Republic agreed to be interviewed and a topic based summary of this can be found on the NCBI website, along with a number of the resulting biographies. These provide an insight into how powerful such sharing of histories and experiences can be.

Correspondents

To create the NCBI Archive we need blind and partially sighted people to tell us about their lives and their views, so we’re asking volunteers, or correspondents, from all over Ireland to record or write about their lives, observations and opinions on particular themes in response to open ended topics. All correspondents will be allocated a number to safeguard their privacy and to allow them to write as candidly as they wish. No-one, apart from the Archive administrator, will have access to any information that could link writings to individuals.

About the Topics and Themes

About twice a year, the intention is to send out a set of suggestions for the theme of writing. The themes will be chosen by a panel, usually in consultation with users of NCBI and, eventually, users and friends of the Archive. Ideas from the correspondents themselves will also be welcomed, although people are free to write on any subject that interests them.

There is no limit on word length. Correspondents may type, write by hand, word process, email, record onto tape, draw, send photographs, diagrams, cuttings from the press, poems, stories, letters and so on. It doesn’t matter about “good grammar”, spelling or style. The emphasis is on self-expression, candour and a willingness to be a vivid social commentator, and tell a good story. The value will be on subjective experience, and descriptively rich material which can offer insights into the everyday life of people who are blind and partially sighed. People writing about themselves, their families and friends, their workplaces, leisure and social activities and their communities, can provide a unique perspective, hopefully over a number of years, through which social change can be explored at the personal level.

How Do I get Involved?

If you’d like to get involved, then let us have your views on the first topic, which is Parenting. This could be from the way your parents responded to you as a vision impaired child, from your experiences as a vision impaired mother or father, or your experiences of parenting a child or children who are vision impaired. Write, record or email the Archive administrator with your views and experiences along with how she can get in touch with you and she can then set up an identity for you where you’ll be known only by a reference number so that your anonymity is assured.

Her contact details are:
Niamh MacAlister,
Archive Administrator, NCBI Library, Unit 29 Finglas Business Centre, Jamestown Road, Finglas, Dublin 11.
Tel: 01- 8642266.
Email: niamh.macalister@ncbi.ie

Please make sure that you send your name and contact details with your correspondence.