QUALITATIVE ARCHIVE OF THE NORTHERN IRELAND CONFLICT The conflict in Northern Ireland over the last 35 years has generated a vast body of qualitative material such as interviews, video and audio recordings, photographs etc. that can be utilised to address the issues of violence and reconciliation. Effective use of the bulk of this material, however, has been thwarted by its wide dispersion, much of it located outside Northern Ireland, and the lack of any central index or cataloguing system. The situation has been that some people may know quite a bit about some of the material but no one has a comprehensive overview of it all. BACKGROUNDACCESSING THE NI CONFLICT ARCHIVE WHAT IS NIQA? Main aim: to produce a catalogue of qualitative material on the Northern Ireland conflict and facilitate access to the material for the purposes of primary and secondary analysis. Main objectives produce a comprehensive collated catalogue of primary qualitative material covering the 35 year span of the Troubles in Northern Ireland create an indexed retrieval system for the catalogue holdings, accessible through ESDS Qualidata and ARK where material is at risk of being lost or the holder requests, transfer material to digital format and make accessible via ESDS PHILOSOPHY In keeping with the philosophy of the ARK Project, the existence of the catalogue means that anyone - from academic researchers and documentary film makers to secondary school students and interested members of the general public - will be able to quickly discover the scope of qualitative material on the Northern Ireland 'Troubles' that is held in archives and collections and will know how to go about viewing or obtaining access to the material. The completed catalogue will be available to the public through ARK and takes the form of an online searchable database. THE PROJECT TEAM Martin Melough (Co-Investigator) Robert Miller (Principal Investigator) Peter McLoughlin (Research Assistant) NI Conflict Archive, ARK Project School of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work Queens University Belfast BT7 1NN Northern Ireland Tel: +44 (028) URL: CONTACT THE ARK PROJECT The ARK Project - a Social and Political Archive for Northern Ireland - is a joint resource between the two Northern Ireland universities: the Queens University, Belfast and the University of Ulster. ARK was established in 2000 and has the goal of making social science information on Northern Ireland available to the widest possible range of constituencies. As part of ARK, the Northern Ireland Conflict Archive can be accessed by going to the ARK web site – and selecting NIQA from the Explore ARK menu. Alternatively, the Conflict Archive can be entered directly by going to Both routes link to the searchable database. The database provides for searches on four criteria: words in the title or abstract year of research author/investigator a set of topic categories Here a search is displayed with: Protestant in the Abstract/Title box 2000 in the Years box Mitchell in the Investigators box Identity in the Subject box Here the search has produced five entries. Clicking on either the Title or the More box in search results will bring up the full entry This search will return only entries that matched all four criteria. If a box is left blank, it has no effect and will not limit the search. title principal investigator(s) description/abstract contact details of holder/depositor access conditions and availability sponsors subject categories and main topics study and fieldwork dates geographic area type of data units of observation and method of data collection sampling details (population, weighting, N) publications language copyright The complete record consists of information on the following fields: