Louth County Museum sets its sights on the future

13 Apr 2010

The Louth County Museum is set to become the first local authority museum to broadcast a series of live radio webcasts.

The museum will host six hour-long episodes, the first of which will be broadcast on 26 April, on various aspects of life and work in Co Louth’s capital town during the 20th century.

The internet broadcasts will focus primarily on the lives of people working in the local brewing, tobacco manufacturing and shoe manufacturing industries, as well the role and nature of education and entertainment in the Dundalk area.

The programmes are designed to assist schools in local history studies with the preparation of a specialised worksheet dealing with each theme over the course of the broadcasts. The worksheets, which will be available to download from the museum’s website, will feature photographs of the activity being discussed along with a unique insight into the dramatic changes in local life over the course of a lifetime.

The webcasts will feature guests with first-hand experience of working in local industries and will provide an entertaining and informative glance at life in Dundalk during the 20th century, explained programme host and local radio broadcaster Harry Lee.

Internet radio is the future

“I believe that internet radio is the future and that this is a great way of making history interesting and relevant to a new generation. We are hoping to generate an atmosphere of a fireside conversation, making it an enjoyable experience for our guests and, of course, our listeners,” Lee said.

According to museum curator Brian Walsh: “We are trying to do something novel in the presentation of history to schools not only locally but internationally, as well. By broadcasting through our website, we are looking to develop a new audience, to make the museum and the collection interesting in a different way, and most importantly, produce a publicly available archive of recorded material for future reference.”

He continued: “We hope to develop several aspects to this project, including a series of programme worksheets, as well as a text and email facility that will enable our audience to ask questions they feel are important.”

“This is an innovative technology that has not been used before. The younger generation are well used to using computers to find information so we thought it would be a good idea to use the internet to provide a history lesson,” said the project’s technical adviser, Jason McGee, of Jascom Limited.

The running order for live webcasts is as follows: