March is upon us, and if you’re involved with an Irish music archives, you know that means the Green Season is in full swing. The St. Patrick’s season is always a busy one for WIMA, so here’s an update of what we’ll be up to this month.

This Saturday, March 6, we have the eleventh annual Green Tie Event, which is a major fundraiser for the archives. We’ll be featuring entertainment from local traditional band áthas, the McMenamin Irish Dancers, and you can watch (and participate in!) the Great Celtic Whiskey Debate! It’s all taking place at the Wisconsin Club—contact the Milwaukee Irish Fest Center for further details.

The week of March 22, WIMA will participate in our third Alternative Spring Break with the UWM Archives department. We’re happy and grateful to have the help of another MLIS student volunteer during this week, and we’ll be putting a lot of energy into processing the festival photo collection of Milwaukee Irish Fest.

We’re still moving forward with the Dunn Collection project as well. A CD copy of the recently re-mastered cylinder recordings are currently hurtling through the mail system, and we here at WIMA are looking forward to having a listen! This batch has some speed and pitch correction applied, thanks in part to a special set of uilleann pipes that may very well have been played on the recordings themselves! More information on that will be coming soon.

And speaking of the Dunn Collection and fundraisers, WIMA just launched it’s Adopt a Cylinder program online! If you’d like to help support getting the Dunn Collection online for the world to see and hear, please consider sponsoring a cylinder recording! Check out the website here: http://www.irishfest.com/archives/adopt-a-cylinder.php

Enjoy March in all its Irish celebratory glory, and be sure to get out and partake of some live Irish music wherever you may be!