The OG(H)AM project involved harnessing digital tools from different fields to transform scholarly and popular understanding of ogham—an ancient script unique to Ireland and Britain that consists of strokes and notches. There are over 400 examples of large stones with ogham inscriptions from Ireland and Britain. Additionally, there are about two dozen small, portable ogham-bearing objects still extant. Although the original ogham script was probably devised for use on wood, it was later applied to stone. Later still, the writing system was adapted to suit the format of the manuscript page and survives in manuscript sources dating from as early as the ninth century and continuing up to the modern period.

While the majority of evidence for ogham is found in Ireland, there are important clusters of ogham inscriptions found in Britain, predominantly in Wales, Devon and Cornwall, Scotland, and the Isle of Man. Previously, scholarship has studied the ogham evidence from Ireland and Britain independently of each other. The OG(H)AM project was a collaboration between Glasgow and Maynooth universities to produce the first digital corpus of all ogham inscriptions known to date from both Ireland and Britain.

As a three-dimensional writing system, the ogham script poses several interesting challenges for text encoding. Regarding the orientation of the inscriptions: usually ogham is engraved vertically up the edges and horizontally across the top of stone pillars. However, the reading direction may vary for each inscription. Moreover, there are intriguing examples of spiral and circular inscriptions which further complicate interpretation.

The ogham script serves as an invaluable case study for testing the capabilities and limits of text encoding to date. The comparison of ogham evidence from both Ireland and Britain creates connections which significantly enlighten our understanding of this unique writing system and highlights the complex linguistic heritage and cultural exchanges of these neighbouring islands.