Irish Folklore Drought Impacts Database (IFDID) v. 1.0

The Irish Folklore Drought Impacts Database (IFDID) collates information about Irish Droughts recorded in the digitised records of The School’s Collection of the Irish National Folklore Collection. The School’s Collection compiled folklore and local tradition collected by pupils in primary schools across what is now the Republic of Ireland between 1937 and 1939. The digitised images of the original copybook pages are available to search and view, freely online via www.duchas.ie. The School’s Collection was systematically searched to identify information about drought periods and each account was assessed and categorised using a modified version of the classification scheme employed by the European Drought Impact Inventory (EDII) (Stahl et al. 2012). 

Accounts range from the early 1800s to the end of 1938. Spatial details are provided on three different levels, in addition to Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics Level 2 (Nuts2) regions, county location, and if available, a more localised place name (e.g. town or city name) are also recorded. Each account is a rich, empirical source based on personal experiences or local oral tradition. These textual accounts are often temporally and geographically specific, and they provide detailed information about the personal, everyday impacts that sustained drought periods wrought on families, communities, livestock, crops, and the surrounding natural landscapes and wildlife. However, as with all sources based on individual or community recollection, care should be taken in any analysis to fully consider the impact of memory, the time between the event and the recording, and the perceived audience the informants believed they were speaking to. This new open access tool offers significant potential for multi-disciplinary investigation of drought periods across Ireland offering a unique window into the first-hand, lived experiences of drought impacts in the past and highlighting the mitigation strategies that were adopted. It can also be used as a companion to the newspaper derived Irish Droughts Impact Database (IDID) available via https://zenodo.org/records/7216126.

爱尔兰民俗干旱影响数据库（Irish Folklore Drought Impacts Database, IFDID）整合了爱尔兰国家民俗收藏之学校馆藏数字化记录中所记载的爱尔兰干旱相关信息。该学校馆藏是1937年至1939年间，由如今爱尔兰共和国各地小学学生收集的民俗与地方传统资料汇编而成。原始抄本页面的数字化图像可通过www.duchas.ie免费在线检索与浏览。研究团队对该学校馆藏开展系统性检索，以识别干旱时期相关记录，并采用经修改的欧洲干旱影响名录（European Drought Impact Inventory, EDII）分类方案（Stahl等，2012）对每条记录进行评估与分类。
相关记录的时间跨度为19世纪早期至1938年末。其空间细节分为三个层级：除统计区域命名法第二级（Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics Level 2, NUTS2）区域、县级行政区域外，若存在更具体的本地化地名（如城镇或城市名）也会同步记录。每条记录均为基于个人亲历或当地口头传统的详实实证资料。这些文本记录通常具备精准的时空属性，详细记载了持续性干旱对家庭、社区、牲畜、农作物以及周边自然景观与野生生物造成的日常个人层面影响。但与所有基于个人或社区回忆的史料一样，开展相关分析时需充分考量记忆偏差、事件发生至记录的时间间隔，以及受访者预设的沟通对象所带来的潜在影响。这款全新的开放获取工具为爱尔兰境内不同时期干旱事件的多学科研究提供了重要潜力，可让研究者得以通过独特视角窥探历史上干旱影响的第一手亲历体验，并揭示当时所采用的减灾策略。此外，该数据库还可与通过https://zenodo.org/records/7216126 获取的报纸来源爱尔兰干旱影响数据库（Irish Droughts Impact Database, IDID）配合使用。