Sydney eScholarship Community:

Arriving, digging, performing, returning: an exercise in rich interpretation of a djanba song text in the sound archive of the Wadeye Knowledge Centre, Northern Territory of Australia

2013-02-13T15:52:35Z

Title: Arriving, digging, performing, returning: an exercise in rich interpretation of a djanba song text in the sound archive of the Wadeye Knowledge Centre, Northern Territory of Australia Authors: Barwick, Linda; Marett, Allan; Blythe, Joe; Walsh, Michael Abstract: This article covers issues around song language interpretation and documentation in relation to a djanba song in Murriny Patha language composed by Lawrence Kolumboort (djanba 11). Description: Submitted with the permission of the volume editor, Prof. R.M. Moyle.

Barwick, L. (1994). The Filipino komedya and the Italian maggio: cross-cultural perspectives on related genres of popular music theatre

2013-02-12T15:52:38Z

Title: Barwick, L. (1994). The Filipino komedya and the Italian maggio: cross-cultural perspectives on related genres of popular music theatre Authors: Barwick, Linda Abstract: The Filipino komedya and the Italian maggio are contemporary traditions of sung popular theatre that use written librettos drawing on European chivalrous verse romances. Their present-day forms, themes and performance practice reflect the intercultural contact and conflict that have characterised their histories. After introducing case studies drawn from the Filipino komedya and the Italian maggio, the paper surveys the history of performance traditions associated with the chivalrous romance, including review of contemporary survivals in a number of performance media, and the use of writing in these and other popular traditions. In order to explain the striking parallels in present-day manifestations of both komedya and maggio, it is necessary to grasp the complex but largely hidden history of dramatic performances that have accompanied the published verse romances. Description: This paper has been archived in PARADISEC as part of collection LB1, "Luna and Burgos (Ilocos Sur) (1993) and Vigan (Ilocos Sur) (1995)". Linda Barwick (collector), Linda Barwick (author), 1994; Article by Linda Barwick on 'The Filipino komedya and the Italian maggio', PDF, http://catalog.paradisec.org.au/collections/LB1/items/ARTICLE 2013-02-12.

Online presentation of media and text. Foundations for verification of analyses.

2012-02-07T04:10:36Z

Title: Online presentation of media and text. Foundations for verification of analyses. Authors: Thieberger, Nick; Nordlinger, Rachel Abstract: Schroeter and Thieberger (2006) reported on the development of EOPAS, a method for presenting interlinear text together with the media it transcribes, using timecodes to access points in the media correlated to corresponding chunks of text. The EOPAS model was completely rewritten in 2010 and is now an open-source tool with a working model based at the University of Melbourne. In this paper we describe the new model, illustrate its use and the workflow from transcription and interlinear annotation through to presentation. We then discuss the uses to which data in this format have been put and to which they could be put in future.

Digital representation and the use of shared texts: the case of a theatrical prompt book

2012-02-07T04:09:52Z

Title: Digital representation and the use of shared texts: the case of a theatrical prompt book Authors: Fiormonte, Domenico; Schmidt, Desmond Abstract: The digitisation of cultural textual artefacts is focussed on conservation in digital archives and on the information retrieval tools for which they are designed. Many such artefacts, however, exist only in the form of discontinuous, unstable and stratified objects whose representation within this model presents problems for humanists and technologists alike. A less canonical vision of the past reveals that variation and instability are the constitutive elements of culture and their transmission is characterised by interaction and contamination. The digital representation thus needs an ethnographic perspective, in a cultural context interwoven with relations, exchanges and alterations. The typescript of the comedy by the author, who was also actor and director, the Roman Ettore Petrolini, which we examine here, exhibits the very characteristics that sum up this challenge. The comedy Peppe er Pollo (Peppe the Fool) was composed in the early 1920s and performed until the end of the 1930s, in standard Italian or in the Roman dialect. The Italianisations and alterations to the substance of the text probably by actors and other agents are very numerous. What we are dealing with is a network of written and spoken traces, which cannot be linked back to a single authorial intention. How to capture this complex stratification by different agents and how to facilitate interactions with users, readers, students and scholars is obviously a great technical challenge. We extend our earlier work on Multi-Version-Documents or MVDs for recording complex textual variation to the meta-textual properties editors typically use to structure or interpret the text. Instead of using embedded markup to record this information we represent it externally, so breaking down the humanistic information into separate categories of text, markup and images of the typescript. The markup, like the text, exists in many versions, and both are stored in separate MVDs so that the correct markup and text can be retrieved for each version. The two are then combined in the browser with links to the images of the relevant pages. This separation allows different sets of markup, e.g. structural vs. interpretative markup, to be freely mixed or interchanged, so increasing collaboration between scholars and facilitating information reuse. Conformance to embedded XML standards such as TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) is thus forced into an outer layer of the software system, as an import/export format, rather than integrated into its design.

Community-based website building: The Language Documentation Training Center’s approach to mentor-mentee partnership

2012-02-07T04:09:11Z

Title: Community-based website building: The Language Documentation Training Center’s approach to mentor-mentee partnership Authors: Butler, Katie Abstract: Since its founding in 2004, the Language Documentation Training Center (LDTC) at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa has helped more than 80 participants publish web sites documenting various aspects of their native languages and cultures. LDTC’s approach to language documentation is built on a mentor-mentee partnership, which is an ongoing successful model because of linguistics students who volunteer their time to teach weekly workshops and because of the international student community who consistently show interest in language documentation. This paper will provide an overview of the LDTC program and will argue in favor of community-based web site building, allowing speakers to author their own work and acquire basic skills for language documentation in the process. Funded by departmental and university grants, LDTC holds eight 2-hour workshops in a semester which are offered free of charge for interested community members. UH linguistics graduate students volunteer to teach the weekly workshops and are partnered with one or two participants who they mentor throughout the semester. The workshops cover topics such as orthography, basic linguistic analysis, creating dictionaries using Lexique Pro, and basic web design. Advanced workshops are also offered to continuing participants who are interested in more advanced tools for linguistic analysis and web design. Creating web sites focusing on individual languages is beneficial to both the mentor (UH linguistics graduate student) and the mentee (language consultant) as they collect both written and recorded data – such as wordlists, songs, and stories – which can be published to the web at the mentee’s discretion. Some participants choose to pursue the advanced workshops to further develop their web site by adding more linguistic content as well as aesthetic design features. Beginning participants design their web sites using a WYSIWYG editor, and the student mentors provide assistance when needed. At the end of a semester, the LDTC student directors collect the web site materials from each participant and upload the pages to the university’s open-access digital repository Scholar Space. The LDTC site (www.ling.hawaii.edu/~uhdoc) provides links to individual sites hosted in Scholar Space, while some participants opt to purchase their own web domain. These web sites give participants an opportunity to showcase their language and culture to the broader online community, which in many cases, has led linguistics and anthropologist field workers as well as minority community leaders to contact past LDTC participants about their sites. This model of LDTC has proven to be rewarding for those involved, and it is the Center’s hope that other universities or groups that have the means can adopt similar practices that will benefit their own communities.

Getting it Right from the Start

2012-02-07T04:08:31Z

Title: Getting it Right from the Start Authors: Gardiner, Gabrielle; Byrne, Alex; Thorpe, Kirsten; Mulhollann, Elizabeth Abstract: Setting parameters and calibrating digital research tools at the outset of humanities research can pay dividends in facilitating the preservation of data and facilitating its reuse. This paper explores approaches to both quantitative and qualitative research with particular reference to the Indigenous research data which is managed via the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Data Archive (ATSIDA). This paper will look at the technical, ethical and logistical considerations of establishing a digital data archive. In addition, it will explore the importance of developing and maintaining relationships when establishing a trusted digital data archive, including the researched, the researchers and the technical teams. It will also examine the development of skills across the stakeholder groups and how this strengthens the relationships of the key stakeholders.

'On-line' resources for off-line communities

2012-02-15T08:42:54Z

Title: 'On-line' resources for off-line communities Authors: Turpin, Myfany; Carew, Margaret Abstract: In small communities in Central Australia, many Aboriginal language speakers do not have access to computers or internet. In such contexts, how then do we ensure research materials are 'on-line' to the people with whom we record and work? This paper considers how my Arandic song research, conducted in such small communities, can be made accessible and 'pertinent' to community members. Pertinence is 'relevant for the language community's aims and efforts for their language' (Nathan 2006). I consider how audio recordings are used and how song books are used and then discuss a collaboration with Batchelor Institute (BIITE) that aims to create an audio book of an Alyawarr women's song series. Data storage, management and retrieval play a role in how pertinent and quickly audio recordings can be made available to community stakeholders. Community requests are often for a particular set of songs, or by a particular person. These songs are embedded in larger recordings and may span many recordings. The use of iTunes, not just as a management tool but also as an annotation tool has proven efficient. A methodology for extracting songs as separate files whilst maintaining their link to the original recording, then importing and annotating in itunes, enables the exact material requested to be retrieved and burnt onto CD within a short time. These CDs are listened to in private and on some occasions played on a ghetto blaster as 'back-up' for singers at a ceremony where only a few people know the words. A new genre of expression that has emerged through a language revival program has been the local creation of songbooks. These children's songs are typed up, printed, illustrated and spiral-bound. They are used regularly in classrooms and the pictures stimulate further discussion. Although there are audio recordings of these songs, it is the books that are used as a tool for teaching the lyrics and their meanings. Furthermore, the audio and the song book are detached together. The Alyawarr song series publication aims to fulfill both needs. The book will include descriptions and images of what the songs refer to, as well as of the ceremonial designs and dancing. An accompanying audio CD will enable it to be used in other contexts. We also consider sound printing, where audio can be accessed by placing an Audio Reader over the text, as a means of reliably linking sound with text and images.

Challenges in lemmatising signed language digital video corpora: the measure of lexical frequency in Australian and British signed languages

2012-02-07T04:07:11Z

Title: Challenges in lemmatising signed language digital video corpora: the measure of lexical frequency in Australian and British signed languages Authors: Schembri, Adam; Johnston, Trevor; Fenlon, Jordan; Cormier, Kearsy; Rentelis, Ramas Abstract: Digital video archives of Auslan (Australian sign language) and BSL (British Sign Language) are slowly being transformed into machine-readable linguistic corpora. Each archive (Auslan 2004-2008, BSL 2008-2001) consists of data collected from deaf native and near-native signers. The datasets are being annotated using ELAN software. The majority of the video data will be made accessible online (with some limits to access for sensitive data). In this presentation, we report on the on-going studies of lexical frequency in these two signed languages—63,436 sign tokens produced in 360 clips by 109 participants in the currently annotated Auslan dataset, and 25,000 sign tokens from the corpus conversation data in the BSL dataset (500 signs each from 50 participants). Preliminary results signs indicate that between 65% and 60% of the Auslan and BSL data respectively consist of signs from the core lexicon (i.e. those signs which are highly conventionalised in form and meaning across contexts, (see Johnston, 2011, Johnston &Schembri, 1999, 2010). The next two largest categories are pointing signs (12% and 23% respectively) and signs from outside the core lexicon (i.e., gestures and sequences of enactment or 'constructed action') (6.5% and 9% respectively). The remaining number of tokens consists of fingerspelled signs (5% in both datasets), depicting constructions (i.e., depicting verbs of location, motion and/or handling, 11% and 3% respectively), and sign names (0.2 and 0.3% respectively). We discuss some of the challenges creating a lemmatised corpus of a sign language, including difficulties in differentiating core from non-core signs and sign from gesture, as well as how our work informs both sign language documentation and description specifically and linguistic theory more generally. Johnston, T. (2011). Lexical frequency in sign languages. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education. Johnston, T., &Schembri, A. (1999). On defining lexeme in a signed language. Sign Language and Linguistics, 2(2), 115-185. Johnston, T., &Schembri, A. (2010). Variation, lexicalization and grammaticalization in signed languages. Langage et Société, 131, 19-35.

Creating a digital wordlist for Lopit: a case study in time and motion

2012-02-07T04:06:17Z

Title: Creating a digital wordlist for Lopit: a case study in time and motion Authors: Billington, Rosey; Musgrave, Simon; Hajek, John Abstract: A vast range of techniques and technologies is now available to those working in language documentation. With so many options for the collection, storage and presentation of data, it is essential to find and maintain reproducible approaches that are focused on the accessibility and preservation of language materials, but which are also manageable within the limits of available time and resources. Here, we detail the process of producing a digitised wordlist for Lopit, a Nilo-Saharan language from South Sudan, as a useful case study of the precise resource requirements of what is ostensibly a relatively simple but still important task. The entirety of the process is covered, from the initial planning stages through to the creation of a 200 -item digital wordlist with embedded audio files, in presentation and archival form. We address the motivations for this project, both in terms of the digital wordlist format and the reasons why Lopit was selected, and how these relate to the more general motivations behind language documentation. In terms of the data collection, we explain the selection and composition of the particular wordlist, the procedure of working on this list with Lopit speakers in Melbourne up to, during and after recording sessions, and also give details of the technical considerations for the audio recordings. Our attention then shifts to methods of managing and working with the data, as well as associated hardware and software considerations, before we explain how the final wordlist is produced with embedded audio for presentation and archival form respectively. Throughout the process, our choices are informed by emerging best practices for language documentation, while mindful of the reality of being constrained by limited time and available resources. We also emphasise the need for the materials produced to be accessible and usable by researchers and non-researchers alike. We include some discussion of how materials like digital wordlists may be useful, and the potential directions for future research on Lopit. A combined timeline and tasklist of the process are presented in conjunction with our discussion and recommendations, with the hope that this information will be useful to others in making realistic and best-practice plans for this type of language documentation.

The Digital Nehan Songbook Project

2012-02-07T04:05:34Z

Title: The Digital Nehan Songbook Project Authors: Olstad, John Abstract: The Digital Nehan Songbook project seeks to add native language songs to the broader project of describing and documenting Nehan, an Oceanic language spoken on Nissan Island of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, Papua New Guinea. Like virtually all other current documentation projects, the songs and accompanying texts will be made available to the Nehan community. The logistics of making "data will be made available" a meaningful concept for the Nehan community is the topic of this paper. The language is spoken on an atoll where electricity is especially scarce and therefore the community has little access to computers and no access to the internet. However, small devices such as Chinese .mp4 players are found throughout the island and some residents even own laptops which are charged by petrol generator or solar battery. Any multimedia data should be maximally small in size and easy to share and playback. Therefore, this project looks to leave the community with a nice presentation of the songbook that is appropriate considering resource limits. The solution employed in this case is to make the standard archive-quality general recordings of the Nehan songbook but also leave behind SMIL presentations of .mp3 audio for those with laptops and .lrc (lyrics file) accompanied .mp3 files for synchronised text presentations on .mp4 players. The results are highly portable multimedia with minimal file sizes. I will discuss workflow, give an overview of common software that can be used to view SMIL presentations and the types of devices that currently support .lrc coded audio and finally, report the overall success of the project.

Roundtable on the ethics of making publicly available historical data 'more' public through linkage and database construction

2012-02-07T04:04:54Z

Title: Roundtable on the ethics of making publicly available historical data 'more' public through linkage and database construction Authors: Kippen, Rebecca; McCalman, Janet; Silcot, Sandra; Smith, Len Abstract: Over recent decades there has been a burgeoning of individual-level population data available from historical records, including censuses, and birth, death and marriage registers. These can be linked to other historical material to form rich prosopographical demographic datasets; that is, individual life and family histories synthesised from a variety of sources for an entire population to enable the study of that population. The creation and analysis of these datasets raises ethical issues around individual and familial privacy. Although the data included are often technically publicly available, their linkage and inclusion in databases gives them a public profile they were unlikely to have in their former homes of archives, registers or libraries. The speakers will discuss what responsibilities researchers have in linking and analysing historical data on individuals and families, what rights current individuals and families have over the use of their ancestral histories, and what safeguards, if any, should be put in place. The speakers are key researchers on the 'Founders and Survivors' project, a multi-university, multi-disciplinary study tracing and analysing the life courses and genealogies of Tasmania's population from convict colonisation to World War One and beyond. Description: Chair: Rebecca Kippen, University of Melbourne Speakers: Janet McCalman, University of Melbourne; Sandra Silcot, University of Melbourne; Len Smith, The Australian National University

Dual levels of significance in Australian historical data: the case for equilibrium

2012-02-07T04:03:52Z

Title: Dual levels of significance in Australian historical data: the case for equilibrium Authors: Bellamy, Craig Abstract: This presentation will examine a number of digitised historical corpuses available to Australian researchers to illuminate their ongoing significance within digital scholarship. Many of the corpuses are available through the National Library, state and national archives, and various institutional repositories. Through contextualisation with seminal digital projects in classics and other historical disciplines, the author will examine the significance of the corpuses in both their historical setting and importance for digital scholarship. It is the contention of the author that many digital corpuses, whist emanating from significant recordings of the Australian past, have a less-significant presence online. And inversely, digital corpuses that may not record a significant historical event may, in fact, be highly significant to digital scholarship (both now and in the future). It is these 'levels of significance' between content and form that are often unbalanced in many digital projects, which may impede their longer term sustainability. Historical significance, it its many layers, is a vital determinant of sustainability. And historical significance is also largely a component of scholarly interpretation and the underlying factors that either impede or promote this. The author, through examining a number of case studies, will suggest the properties of an ideal model.

Investigating Connected Speech from Tohono O'odham Digitized Legacy Data

2012-02-07T04:03:16Z

Title: Investigating Connected Speech from Tohono O'odham Digitized Legacy Data Authors: Fitzgerald, Colleen Abstract: Archival and legacy resources provide rich material for linguistic investigation, provided such materials are accessible. The growing number of digital tools offers prospects for investigating new research questions. Working with such resources and considering usability, particularly with community members, leads to new insights with old data. In this paper, I talk about how exactly this has happened for the Tohono O'odham language by digitizing two legacy resources: an out-of-print dictionary (Mathiot 1973) and fieldnotes from the late Kenneth Hale. This paper focuses on new linguistic investigations possible because of having digitized these materials. Tohono O'odham is a Native American language primarily spoken in the southwestern United States. The number of speakers has been declining, with an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 speakers. While there has been considerable linguistic research done on the Tohono O'odham language, including preliminary descriptions (Dolores 1913, Mason 1950, Hale 1959, Saxton 1963, 1982, Mathiot 1973, Zepeda 1988), most research has focused on syntax (i.e., Hale 1975, Fitzgerald 2003) phonology (i.e. Hill and Zepeda 1992, Fitzgerald 1997, 2002), and morphology (i.e., Zepeda 1984, 1987, Hill and Zepeda 1991, 1998). Relatively little has been done on connected speech, particularly important for an endangered language, with benefits to revitalization and second language instruction. In fact, there are unanalyzed resources in terms of connected speech in the Mathiot dictionary and the Hale field notebooks. Mathiot noted deletions, assimilations and other attested surface forms, with annotations indicating the citation form. The Hale notebooks were recorded in 1961 from two Tohono O'odham speakers (different dialects) and a third speaker of the Pima variety, with accompanying recordings. While Hale's transcriptions are in citation form, he indicates pauses and high-level phrase groupings and thus gives indications of prosodic phrasing. His transcriptions are also contextualized, whereas Mathiot's connected speech transcriptions are given out of their narrative context. The O'odham digitized materials have considerable potential for data-mining, as well as practical uses for revitalization and maintenance. I address how each set of materials presents challenges, including how to best represent aspects of connected discourse in tools such as FLEx, to consider what elements are helpful for revitalization and language teaching, and to package information for second language learners. Exploring these implications is useful for other revitalization and research teams; it offers ideas about what type of documentation will have future use, as well as challenges in balancing connected speech and citation forms in standardized formats like dictionaries.

Found: Data, Textuality, and the Digital Humanities

2012-02-07T04:02:19Z

Title: Found: Data, Textuality, and the Digital Humanities Authors: Ramsay, Stephen Abstract: Computational processes generate lists: lists of numbers, lists of words, lists of coordinates, lists of properties. We transform these lists into more exalted forms -- visualizations, maps, information systems, software tools -- but the list remains the fundamental data structure of computing, from which most other structures are derived. Whenever we treat the world as data, we are nearly always creating lists. But what sort of *texts* are these, and can we consider them the same way that we consider other texts within the humanities? In this paper, I offer some meditations on the nature of lists, and suggest that it is the paucity of information they provide -- and the ways in which that paucity licenses narrative and explanation -- that allows us to imagine computational representations as texts that can play a fruitful role in the wider context of humanistic inquiry.

Archaeological database development: the people and place project

2012-02-07T04:01:31Z

Title: Archaeological database development: the people and place project Authors: Murray, Tim; Cook, Penny; Tuohy, Conal Abstract: This project, funded by ANDS in 2011, will build the platform for a national database of historical archaeological collections, excavated sites and the people connected to those objects and places; to be called the Australian Historical Archaeology Database. Each year archaeologists (both academic and private consultants) excavate tens of thousands of artefacts from historical archaeological sites across Australia. While some states (e.g. Victoria) require catalogues to be prepared in a standard format, the majority of catalogue data are stored in small, standalone spreadsheets or custom-built databases, and few are made freely available. There is no central register of these individual datasets, and many significant collections are simply unknown to archaeological researchers. Between 2001 and 2004, the ARC-Linkage project 'Exploring the Archaeology of the Modern City' (EAMC), led by Murray, created two research databases which offered, for the first time, a central database of 700,000 artefacts from multiple historical archaeological sites and a companion dataset of historical occupancy data relating to 2200 individuals who occupied those sites. While extensive in their data content, the databases themselves too limited in their structure and require significant design input to make them truly effective tools for managing and sharing historical archaeological data. This project will federate the two EAMC databases, undertake additional data auditing, and seek new datasets from the private, public and tertiary sectors. It will enable researchers to access a vast dataset that is currently unavailable to them, and provide the platform for future datasets to be made freely available in a standardised and timely fashion. Our paper reports progress and will conclude by discussing several significant challenges:- accessing and integrating privately funded research data created for purposes of public compliance and 'future research'; - integrating data from different archival sources, ie artefacts and documents, through the fundamental lynchpins of people and place; - the social/IP challenges of creating a platform for information exchange (online research community) that effectively collates multiple recording systems while respectfully presenting divergent interpretations of those data.

Jurra is best: Metadata design for a range of outputs from legacy recordings

2012-02-07T04:00:11Z

Title: Jurra is best: Metadata design for a range of outputs from legacy recordings Authors: Carew, Margaret Abstract: This paper describes recent work with Gun-nartpa language material recorded on cassette tape in the Maningrida region in 1993-4. Returning in 2010 after a long absence I have commenced working in collaboration with Gun-nartpa speakers to digitise, log, document, repatriate and archive recordings made by elders now deceased. At the outset there were 3 key aims: (i) to repatriate the recordings in real terms, by making sure that family members have opportunities to listen to and engage with the recordings, (ii) to ensure that the recordings are archived and accessible for family members in the future and (iii) to provide a well formed corpus of recorded material for future purposes. This paper considers some of the challenges regarding access to digital material for many in this community, and the need to provide a range of outputs according to different levels of technological capacity. For many, jurra ‘paper’ is still the preferred way to interact with repatriated stories, photographs and memorabilia. Notwithstanding this preference, technological uptake is rapidly increasing, and robust metadata design will enable speakers to access language materials across a range of platforms.

Contributor affiliations

2011-12-15T16:00:45Z

Title: Contributor affiliations

Assessing the Value of Semantic Annotation Services for 3D Museum Artefacts

2012-05-01T17:09:34Z

Title: Assessing the Value of Semantic Annotation Services for 3D Museum Artefacts Authors: Hunter, Jane; Yu, Chih-hao Abstract: This paper describes the 3DSA (3D Semantic Annotation) system developed at the University of Queensland that enables users to attach tags/annotations to points, surface regions or segments of 3D digital artefacts. The 3DSA system is based on a common interoperable annotation model (the Open Annotation Collaboration (OAC) model) and uses ontology-based tags to support further semantic annotation and reasoning across digital heritage collections. By using this common model, we enable annotations to be re-used, migrated and shared - across annotation clients and across different 3D and 2.5D digital representations of a single object. Such flexibility, extensibility and interoperability are essential if cultural institutions are to interact with wide audiences that comprise users with different IT skills, client capabilities and bandwidths. This paper describes the design and functionality of the 3DSA system and evaluates it in the context of capturing community-generated tags and annotations for cultural heritage artefacts in the custody of the UQ Anthropology Museum.

Documentation of traditional songs and ritual texts: issues for archiving

2012-05-01T17:09:33Z

Title: Documentation of traditional songs and ritual texts: issues for archiving Authors: Morey, Stephen Abstract: It is well established that the archiving of materials from endangered languages needs to be not just the archiving of recordings, but also a rich metadata, including, wherever possible, transcriptions, translations, and glossing of the meaningful elements in the languages which would otherwise be lost. All linguistic transcriptions and analysis face complex issues of transcription; there are always alternate ways to represent language transcriptions, such as whether certain grammatical elements should be treated as separate phonological elements, words or particles, or treated as affixes or clitics. In many cases these alternate analyses are in the purview of the linguist; with speakers of the language more or less agreeing on what the form is. With traditional songs and ritual texts, whether in oral or written form, there can be alternate analyses depending on the consultants that the linguist is working with, and these analyses can change over time. For example, when listening back to recordings of traditional ritual / sung texts, consultants sometimes interpret something different on the recording from that which is clearly audible. Which version should be transcribed? Which version is correct? The issue becomes much more complicated when the interpretation of the meaning of such texts is undertaken. And in traditional societies, the interpretations of these materials may have, and did, change over time. So how is this going to be dealt and fit in with the archivist's intention to make 'permanent' records, records that don't change over time? The idea of a 'permanent' record wouldn't have been possible in traditional societies where reanalysis and meaning changing was ongoing. Using examples from Singpho sagas (Hka yawng ningkin, the 'water flowing song), the Tangsa ritual songs (Wihu Qhyoe, the song for the earth mother) and Ahom ritual manuscripts (Ming Mvng Lung Phai, the text for calling back the tutelary spirit of the country), we will demonstrate and discuss these issues.

Looking at language: appropriate design for sign language resources in remote Australian Indigenous communities

2012-05-01T17:09:34Z

Title: Looking at language: appropriate design for sign language resources in remote Australian Indigenous communities Authors: Green, Jennifer; Woods, Gail; Foley, Ben Abstract: Sign languages, or iltyem-iltyem angkety, are in daily use in Arandic speaking communities of Central Australia. They are a form of communication used alongside other semiotic systems, including speech, gesture and drawing practices. Whereas sign languages used in deaf communities operate without any connection to speech, these 'alternate' handsign languages are used in various contexts by people who also use spoken language. They are culturally valued and highly endangered, yet there has been little or no systematic documentation of Arandic sign since Kendon (1988). In this paper we describe a pilot program to record Arandic sign languages, conducted by a community language team, funded by the Maintenance of Indigenous Languages and Records (MILR) program and by the Endangered Languages Documentation Program (ELDP), and auspiced by the Batchelor Institute (BIITE). Research into various aspects of multimodal communication brings with it many theoretical and practical challenges. New technologies and the ever-expanding potentials of data annotation systems create a plethora of choices and huge volumes of recorded material. Whereas the use of film in language documentation has recently become de rigueur, at least in some circles, it is often only as an adjunct to studies of spoken language. When the visual is foregrounded, as it is in sign and gesture research, additional layers of complexity are added that impact on all aspects of the documentation process. How, for example, do we balance the desire for naturalistic visual data with the need for visually 'clean' images? What lessons can linguists learn from ethnocinematographers (Dimmendaal 2010)? What kinds of resources will benefit the community and a range of users (scholarly, archival, educational etc), as well as satisfying community aspirations for medium and long-term engagement with their audio-visual language materials? How do we ensure that our methodologies are robust enough to allow comparisons between primary sign language corpora and alternate sign language ones? We discuss these issues and various others encountered in our research, including our field methodologies, annotation of film data, community consultations and ethical considerations, and issues that have arisen in designing an interactive sign language website for use as a teaching/learning resource in Arandic schools. Although the creation and management of digital archives for primary sign languages have been documented before (see Johnston & Schembri 2006), 'alternate' sign languages have received little attention.

Excellence in research for Australia and sustainable data

2012-05-01T17:09:33Z

Title: Excellence in research for Australia and sustainable data Authors: Musgrave, Simon; Hajek, John Abstract: We are now entering the second round of assessment under the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) model. A number of writers have drawn attention to the problems inherent in this model for the humanities and social sciences (Cooper and Poletti 2011, Dobson 2011, Genoni and Haddow 2009) but what has not received attention (as far as we are aware) is the impact this model is likely to have on the type of work being highlighted and encouraged in this meeting. ERA relies to a large extent on journal rankings and as a result of its first iteration, many academics are experiencing pressure to direct their publications to highly-ranked journals. We suggest that this pressure is already disadvantageous to innovative work utilising digital data. Prestigious journals are, by their nature, conservative institutions and, at least in the humanities, are unlikely to encourage new models for disseminating results. Whilst journals such as Science and Nature routinely host supporting materials for papers on their websites, such practices are uncommon in the humanities. We are aware of a single journal in our field (Language Documentation and Conservation) which is highly ranked in the ERA process (it has an A ranking) and also encourages such publication. New journals which are published online and other alternative modes of disseminating scholarly work will inevitably have to wait some time to achieve any recognition on the ranking lists; indeed as the lists aim to maintain a proportion of journals at each level, it will be very hard for new publications to achieve a high ranking as that must be at the expense of an established publication. Thus the ERA model will tend to discourage innovative modes of publication. Additionally, the model gives no recognition to the idea which underlies much of the work presented in this forum, that making data widely available to colleagues is an inherently worthy activity. The experience of the British assessment exercise on which ERA is based was that researchers were placed under considerable pressure to ensure that their limited research time was geared to producing outputs which would be visible and valuable for assessment. Producing, curating and sharing sustainable data are activities which will struggle to meet these criteria.

Sharing humanities data for e-research: conceptual and technical issues

2012-05-01T17:09:33Z

Title: Sharing humanities data for e-research: conceptual and technical issues Authors: Burrows, Toby Abstract: The humanities, as defined by the Australian Academy of the Humanities, encompass the following disciplines: Archaeology; Asian Studies; Classical Studies; English; European Languages and Cultures; History; Linguistics; Philosophy, Religion and the History of Ideas; Cultural and Communication Studies; the Arts. Researchers in some of these fields employ quantitative and qualitative methodologies similar to those used in the sciences and social sciences, but most research in the humanities is perceived as distinctive and different from research in other fields, both in its methodologies and in its approach to data. Archiving and sharing humanities data for reuse by other researchers is crucial in the development and application of e-research in the humanities. There has been considerable debate about the applicability of e-research in the humanities, particularly around the relevance of programmes to digitize source materials on a large scale. Conceptualized and designed properly, however, a humanities data archive can provide the platform on which data-intensive e-research can be based, and to which e-research processes and tools can be applied. This paper looks at the distinctive characteristics of humanities data, and examines how various models of the humanities research process help in understanding the meaning of 'data' in the humanities. It reviews existing services and approaches to building data archives and e-research services for the humanities, and the assumptions they make about the nature of data. It also analyses some conceptual and technical frameworks which could serve as the basis for future developments, focusing particularly on the place of Linked Open Data in building large-scale humanities e-research environments.

Bringing research and researchers to light: current and emerging challenges for a discipline-based knowledge resource

2012-05-01T17:09:31Z

Title: Bringing research and researchers to light: current and emerging challenges for a discipline-based knowledge resource Authors: Kilner, Kerry; Osborne, Roger Abstract: Australian literary studies have, in the past decade, been greatly assisted by AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource (www.austlit.edu.au), a multi-institutional collaboration between researchers, librarians and software designers from ten universities and the National Library of Australia. Under the leadership of The University of Queensland, this collaboration has produced a web-based research environment that supports a wide range of projects and publications across a diverse array of fields in Australian literary and narrative cultures while also becoming a key resource for teaching and general information. AustLit has consistently worked to integrate the research output of associated projects and is currently planning to expand its position in the community with a new open access and open contribution model. A major innovation in data management and maintenance, the AustLit Research Community[1] structure supports the study of Australian literary and story-making cultures by providing a web-based environment where segments of these cultures can be explored and presented as distinct topics within a larger knowledge framework. Scholars are able to build datasets, annotate, analyse and present that data in a range of ways, and publish scholarly interpretations of their findings in the form of peer reviewed articles. The incorporation of these research-rich datasets into AustLit contributes to an overarching goal of building a comprehensive database of information about Australian writers, writing and print culture more broadly. With a recent decision to move from the current access model as a subscription service, available to relatively few users, to an open access and open contributions model incorporating content produced by a network of volunteers, AustLit is now facing a significant new challenge. The Aus-e-Lit Project[2] has delivered innovative tools and services that will enable AustLit users to engage more directly with AustLit data and to contribute to a Research Commons with collaborative annotations and richly described collections of internet resources. This paper will report on the implications that these innovations bring to current and future research practices. It will consider the successes and challenges that AustLit faces with its aim to be the definitive virtual research environment and information resource for Australian literary, print, and narrative culture, not only for scholars in the field but for students of all levels and the general public. [1] See www.austlit.edu.au/ResearchCommunities [2] The Aus-e-Lit project is funded from 2008 - 2011 by the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) Platforms for Collaboration, through the National eResearch Architecture Taskforce (NeAT), and by the University of Queensland.

Introduction

2012-05-01T17:09:35Z

Title: Introduction Authors: Thieberger, Nick

The ‘Language Archiving Technology’ solutions for sustainable data from digital research

2012-05-01T17:09:32Z

Title: The ‘Language Archiving Technology’ solutions for sustainable data from digital research Authors: Drude, Sebastian; Trilsbeek, Paul; Broeder, Daan Abstract: Since the late 1990s, the technical group at the Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics has worked on solutions for several of the questions addressed in this paradisec-meeting, in particular, how to guarantee long-time-availability of digital research data for future research. The support for the well-known DOBES (Documentation of Endangered Languages) programme has greatly inspired and advanced this work, and lead to the ongoing development of a whole suite of tools for annotating, cataloguing and archiving multi-media data. At the core of the LAT tools is the IMDI metadata schema, now being integrated into a larger network of digital resources in the European CLARIN project. The multi-media annotator ELAN (with its web-based cousin ANNEX) is now well known not only among documentary linguists. Other tools such as the lexical database tool LEXUS, the related knowledge-space builder VICOS and others are not yet widely used. With further development and integration with other tools they also have the potential for being useful tools for representing non-time-related linguistic data. We aim at present an overview of the solutions, both achieved and in development, for creating and exploiting sustainable digital data, in particular in the area of documenting languages and cultures, and their interfaces with related other developments.

Culture documentation as linguistic stimulus

2012-05-01T17:09:32Z

Title: Culture documentation as linguistic stimulus Authors: Jukes, Anthony Abstract: known that various 'traditional' or locally-based cultural and economic practices are declining or changing rapidly. This paper will show how well-filmed short videos of endangered cultural practices can be used for eliciting procedural/cultural narratives as linguistic data, as well as providing visually appealing material for ethnography, culture documentation, and cultural/eco tourism. By recording narrations as a separate soundtrack (cued by the visual stimulus) researchers are able to collect explanations by different speakers representing different age groups, genders, dialects, or in different languages from different regions or even different countries. Taking traditional usage of the sugar palm in Sulawesi, Indonesia as a test case, I demonstrate data collected in a representative sample of languages, and discuss the technical challenges of a truly multilingual multimedia corpus.

Discussing ‘fair use’ of archived recordings of minority music from the mountains of southwestern China

2012-05-01T17:09:36Z

Title: Discussing ‘fair use’ of archived recordings of minority music from the mountains of southwestern China Authors: Ingram, Catherine; Meifang, Wu; Pinxian, Wu; Xuegui, Wu; Zhicheng, Wu Abstract: This paper describes and analyses public discussions within Kam (in Chinese, Dong ?) minority communities in rural southwestern China concerning potential wider online access to one major, recently established archive of Kam song and other cultural recordings. The future of much of the music-making featured in these recordings is uncertain, and this is one reason why the creation of this sustainable digital archive (with PARADISEC) has been enthusiastically supported within Kam communities. However, many issues are currently influencing Kam debate over wider access to this important collection. Using quotations from Kam people's public discussions concerning potential 'fair use' access to this collection (with most discussions also documented on video during 2011 and to be uploaded into the same Kam archive under discussion), this paper summarises and explores Kam people's varying understandings of and views towards the proposed 'fair use' access agreement. As such, it also offers a valuable first-hand insight into custodians' own responses to archival policy and practice. Kam peoples' discussions are framed within the broader analysis I (first author, [name removed]) present of the current cultural, political, and socio-economic dynamics influential regarding both Kam minority communities in particular and recordings of traditional musics from the Asia-Pacific region in general (especially the high-profile court cases involving world-popular bands Deep Forest (Zemp 1996) and Enigma (Guy 2002, Tan forthcoming)). The paper concludes by examining points of convergence and divergence between Kam attitudes and Western archival requirements, and makes initial attempts to suggest how these might be accommodated within agreements permitting some access to the archive beyond that of the depositor (first author, [name removed]) and members of Kam communities themselves.References cited:Guy, Nancy. 2002. 'Trafficking in Taiwan Aboriginal voices.' In Sjoerd R. Jaarsma (ed.) Handle with care: Ownership and control of ethnographic materials. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 195-209.Tan, Shzr Ee. forthcoming. Beyond 'Innocence': An ecosystem of Aboriginal song in Taiwan. Farnham, UK &Burlington, VT: Ashgate.Zemp, Hugo. 1996. 'The/an Ethnomusicologist and the record business.' Yearbook for traditional music 28: 36-55.

Going beyond archiving - a collaborative tool for typological research

2012-05-01T17:09:36Z

Title: Going beyond archiving - a collaborative tool for typological research Authors: Borkowski, Alexander; Schalley, Andrea Abstract: The work described in this paper aims to outline some of the design aspects for a collaborative tool for typological research. This tool is designed to allow for the collation, from multiple contributors, of linguistic examples and their analysis with regards to an open set of variation dimensions of both onomasiological and semasiological nature. The resulting knowledge base combines linguistically relevant categories of human conceptualisation (e.g. in-group, such as ethnic or family group, categories) together with their linguistic coding (e.g. in gender affixes, verbal agreement), all based on actual linguistic examples from diverse natural languages as its underlying data-driven foundation. The system is based on Semantic Web technology and hence can be queried in a flexible way that allows for combining any variation dimensions within a query (e.g. it allows to answer questions such as which languages exhibit joint attention marking by way of verbal suffixing). We will focus on design aspects relating to sustainable data. How can sustainable data for such a project be delimited? Surely, this encompasses commonly accepted aspects such as standards conformity, longevity, and accessibility, which we will address in the paper. Additionally and in particular, however, we will argue that user orientation and involvement is a critical factor. Following on from this, the tool is designed in a way that it (i) does not require linguistic users to be trained extensively in system usage, (ii) allows linguists to deploy their standard methods of data entry (e.g. interlinear glossing), and (iii) provides contributors with immediate integration of their own with previously entered data and access to the resulting analysis (i.e. querying) and research potential. The paper will roughly be structured as follows: We will describe the background and aims of the project, and contextualise it in relation to other similar projects. We will then concentrate on how sustainability is addressed, discussing a number of different facets of sustainability. This includes data storage formats, user interface and workflow modelling, knowledge base design, and system features (in particular system output). We will also outline some problems that have arisen so far and close with an outlook on future development.

‘Scolpire le parole’ [sculpting the words]: Context sensitivity in vocal and movement performance style of the Tuscan Maggio.

2011-11-22T15:59:12Z

Title: ‘Scolpire le parole’ [sculpting the words]: Context sensitivity in vocal and movement performance style of the Tuscan Maggio. Authors: Barwick, Linda Abstract: In the maggio (sung popular theatre) of the Garfagnana valley north of Lucca, the main dimensions open to improvisation, and thus to context sensitivity, are music and movement. The song session, lasting about three hours, is defined by the enactment of a written text, consisting of about 170 stanzas and read to performers a line at a time by an on-stage prompt. The same text is presented on a number of occasions through the summer months in a number of different outdoor venues. Whether performances take place in a clearing in the chestnut forest on a Sunday afternoon or, at night-time, in a piazza within one of the many small towns in the Garfagnana valley, the audience members who surround the performance space are vociferous in their applause and shouted encouragement for particularly appropriate and/or well-executed embellishments to the vocal line and movements (including stylised gestures and sword-fights). Within the Garfagnana, particular characteristics of music and movement have been traditionally associated with different localities. These days, the situation is considerably more complex, as massive emigration and other social changes have decreased the pool of performers and necessitated the formation of companies comprising members from a number of different localities. In addition, improved transport networks have meant that companies from the neighbouring Emilian area occasionally perform in the Garfagnana, so that performers and audiences are exposed to a much wider variety of performance styles than would have been possible in the past. Analysis reveals that rather than singing a fixed melodic contour, singers enjoy a considerable degree of flexibility in performance of the standard stanzaic melody. While most stanzas will be performed in a style associated with the singer's place of origin, other possibilities are available, which may be exploited depending on the contour being used by the other singers (some of whom may come from distant localities using a different style), on the place of performance (and thus the style most appreciated by the local audience), and, importantly, on the context within the narrative. Unusual contours and exceptionally elaborate ornamentation may be used to mark particularly important dramatic or emotional points in the text. Musical and movement aspects of the performance are thus responsive to the performance group, to the dramatic text, and to the audience.

Italian traditional music in Adelaide

2012-05-01T17:09:31Z

Title: Italian traditional music in Adelaide Authors: Barwick, Linda Abstract: This article questions the framing of Italian and other immigrant music traditions within Australian folklore studies. It discusses the fundamental diversity of regional musical cultures brought by Australia's immigrants from Italy and some examples of performances in various contexts in Adelaide in the 1970s and 1980s. Includes musical transcriptions and English translations of song texts.

“An ample and very poetical narrative”: the vicissitudes of “La Pia” between the literary and oral traditions.

2011-01-06T17:04:01Z

Title: “An ample and very poetical narrative”: the vicissitudes of “La Pia” between the literary and oral traditions. Authors: Barwick, Linda Abstract: In the nearly seven hundred years since Dante's Purgatorio first appeared, the story of “La Pia” (Purgatorio V, 130-136), a Sienese woman who died under mysterious circumstances in the Maremma region, has generated much speculation as to her identity and the possible reasons for Dante's having situated this courteous but cryptic soul amongst the negligenti of antePurgatorio. These seven scant lines, placed at the very end of Canto V of Purgatorio, continue to give rise not only to a plethora of commentaries (surveyed and analysed in Diana Glenn's recent work)3, but also to a significant body of creative works that have expanded, elaborated and explored the fragmentary history of Pia. This paper concentrates on the circulation and dissemination of theatrical works drawing on the Pia story in the 19th and 20th centuries, with special emphasis on the Tuscan maggio, a form of sung popular theatre still performed in northwestern Tuscany today. There, La Pia is known to Maggio audiences, as indeed she was to Dante scholars until the end of the nineteenth century, by the name of “Pia de' Tolomei,” and her story unfolds over the course of about three hours.

THE LAST BIWA SINGER: A Japanese Blind Musician in History, Imagination and Performance

2009-09-09T07:02:58Z

Title: THE LAST BIWA SINGER: A Japanese Blind Musician in History, Imagination and Performance Authors: de Ferranti, Hugh Abstract: This book concerns the traditions of Japanese blind musicians and ritualists who accompanied themselves on the biwa, as embodied in the music and identity of Yamashika Yoshiyuki (1901-1996). Yamashika was the last person to have earned his income from performing a repertory of musical tales, songs and rites with biwa (a four-stringed lute), and to many seemed like a twentieth-century apparition of the blind bards who first performed the Tale of the Heike and other canonical medieval narratives. Yamashika’s identity as a musician and individual was far more complex, but he became well known as "the last biwa hōshi" and was the subject of books, media programs, and a feature-length documentary film. An apparent living relic of a Japan long vanished, Yamashika even appeared in the New York Times in his last years. The author draws upon approaches from Japanese historical and literature studies, performance studies and ethnomusicology in an examination of history, which yielded on the one hand images of blind singers that still circulate in Japan and on the other a particular tradition of musical story-telling and rites in regional Kyushu, of representations of Yamashika in diverse media, of his experiences training for and making a living as a professional performer and ritualist from the 1920s on, and of the oral compositional process in performances made between 1989 and 1992. Description: Item HDF1-YY46-A from the Paradisec archive - Yamashika performance of the second dan of the tale "Shuntokumaru", recorded March 7th, 1989.

Using fieldwork data in publications: musicology

2008-06-17T13:04:10Z

Title: Using fieldwork data in publications: musicology Authors: Barwick, Linda Abstract: Unpublished presentation from the Sustainable Data from Digital Fieldwork Conference at the University of Sydney, 5th December 2006

2008-06-17T13:03:36Z

Title: Table of Contents

An ethnography of the EthnoER project

2007-02-20T02:18:03Z

Title: An ethnography of the EthnoER project Authors: Thieberger, Nicholas Abstract: Unpublished presentation from the Sustainable Data from Digital Fieldwork Conference at the University of Sydney, 4th December 2006

Sustainability models for digital preservation

2007-06-20T23:42:32Z

Title: Sustainability models for digital preservation Authors: Pearson, David Abstract: Unpublished presentation from the Sustainable Data from Digital Fieldwork Conference at the University of Sydney, 5th December 2006

The dawning of the age of online collections

2007-06-20T23:42:52Z

Title: The dawning of the age of online collections Authors: Burton, Adrian Abstract: Unpublished presentation from the Sustainable Data from Digital Fieldwork Conference at the University of Sydney, 5th December 2006

The Bidwern project

2007-04-17T23:11:06Z

Title: The Bidwern project Authors: Monus, Leo; McKenzie, Kim; Garde, Murray Abstract: Unpublished presentation from the Sustainable Data from Digital Fieldwork Conference at the University of Sydney, 5th December 2006

Fieldwork Data Sustainability (FIDAS): the FieldHelper project

2007-02-20T02:16:56Z

Title: Fieldwork Data Sustainability (FIDAS): the FieldHelper project Authors: Hayes, Steven Abstract: Unpublished presentation from the Sustainable Data from Digital Fieldwork Conference at the University of Sydney, 5th December 2006

History, memory and music: The repatriation of digital audio to Yolngu communities, or, memory as metadata

2008-06-17T13:00:11Z

Title: History, memory and music: The repatriation of digital audio to Yolngu communities, or, memory as metadata Authors: Toner, Peter Abstract: This paper will examine a range of issues surrounding the documentation, digitization, and repatriation of archival field recordings of Yolngu music as an integral part of a project on the history of Arnhem Land music research. This research project, 'Yolngu Music: Anthropological and Indigenous Perspectives', aims to examine the history of Yolngu music research through two inter-linked perspectives: the intellectual history of Australian anthropology and ethnomusicology in their specific engagement with Yolngu music; and Yolngu oral history and memory concerning the singers who were recorded, perspectives on musical change, and prospects for the contemporary use of digitized archival field recordings produced since the 1920s. An important feature of the latter aim of the project was the decision to repatriate archival collections of field recordings back to the Yolngu communities in which they were made. Although this decision was ethically based, the more specific decision to repatriate digitized collections was grounded in practical concerns: the virtual impossibility of such a large volume of recordings to be made available by AIATSIS archival staff due to existing time and resource pressures; the need to provide multiple copies of any given recording for different individuals or communities; and the need for a process of repatriation that is sustainable over the long term. The use of digitized materials has had a significant impact on methodology (both in the archive and in the field), on documentation, and on the various ways in which these recordings can find a new life upon their return to Yolngu communities. This paper will examine a range of issues revolving around the digitization, documentation, and repatriation of archival recordings of Yolngu music to their traditional owners, and will consider the ongoing engagement with Aboriginal communities that is required for such work beyond the life of any particular research project.

Representing information about words digitally

2008-06-17T13:00:10Z

Title: Representing information about words digitally Authors: Simpson, Jane Abstract: The late 1960s saw the start of the "electronic-dictionary age" (de Schryver, 2003). The growth in the use of computers has transformed all aspects of dictionary-making, from collecting data about word meanings and uses, creating a set of dictionary entries, and displaying, using, preserving and distributing these entries and the data on which they are based. This paper discusses the transformations, and considers the ways in which dictionaries for minority languages are leading or lagging in the electronic-dictionary age. Illustrations are taken mostly from the uses of digital sound in modern multimedia dictionaries.

Introduction: The need for a Pacific languages archive

2008-06-17T12:59:34Z

Title: Introduction: The need for a Pacific languages archive Authors: Pawley, Andrew Abstract: Why do we need an archive of sound recordings of the languages (and music, oral literature, etc.) of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Islands? The short answer is simple: To preserve for posterity as rich as possible a record of the languages and cultures which existed in this region at the times such recordings were first made, in the mid-20th century and which, to a large extent still exist. The Pacific Islands contain some 1300 languages, almost a quarter of the worlds total, and perhaps as many different societies with their own distinctive oral and musical traditions. The forces of modernisation are inexorably transforming traditional ways of life and many languages, oral literatures and other kinds of traditional knowledge are being lost or diminished. The paper will consider a number of more specific questions, such as: Who are the intended users of the archive? What sorts and quantities of materials already exist, needing to be archived? And how is the existence of such an archive likely to shape or influence the research agenda and methods of fieldworkers in the future?

The politics of context: issues for law, researchers and the creation of databases

2008-06-17T13:00:01Z

Title: The politics of context: issues for law, researchers and the creation of databases Authors: Anderson, Jane; Koch, Grace Abstract: Field recordings pose many dilemmas for intellectual property law, researchers, and the creation of databases containing Indigenous knowledge. Challenges arise because these field recordings in tangible form undergo constant change through processes such as digitisation and through differing types of demand for copies. The changing form means that the law is challenged to accommodate the various rights and interests that change with the material; and, researchers must be accountable for interpreting and clarifying the original context of the recordings. Given these difficulties, database designers and users face extremely complex problems in organising and representing Indigenous cultural material. The paper is divided into three sections. The first considers the challenges for the law in accounting for 'originality' along with the dilemma of fixing ownership and private rights in the recording. This leads to the second section of the paper examining how the changing context of the recordings in relation to the law and to the needs of archives affects the researcher. The final section touches briefly on digitisation and copyright, and then raises some pertinent concerns for creating databases of Indigenous knowledge.

Digital encounters with Pacific Island Radio and Television Archives

2008-06-17T12:59:33Z

Title: Digital encounters with Pacific Island Radio and Television Archives Authors: Moyle, Richard Abstract: Although the Archive of Maori and Pacific Music is located within the University of Auckland and is used by staff and students, the last decade has seen a steady increase in the proportion of non-university users to the point now where more than 80% of people requesting copies of items in its holdings are members of the public or students from other educational institutions. Although this bias has created some difficulties of funding from a body receiving Government monies for purposes of teaching and research, the broad-based availability of ethnographic recordings is entirely within the aspirations for the Archive when it was formed in 1970 as a "national institution for the purposes of teaching and research, serving the cultural heritage needs of Maori and the indigenous peoples of the Pacific". One result of the Archive Director's years of fieldwork experience in Samoa, Tonga and the Cook Islands was recognition of the need for urgent action to conserve archival audio recordings held in at-risk conditions within insecure premises at the Government radio stations in these countries. A meeting with two influential businessmen in the music industry led to a direct approach by them to two Government Ministers who subsequently awarded the Archive funds to digitise the radio station holdings. The archival holdings of Samoa's Televise Samoa were included in the funding. Under the protocol signed with the New Zealand Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs, each organisation sent a specified quantity of its at-risk holdings, together with a technician who would receive three-weeks of training in digitisation and noise removal. The Archive offered to curate the original materials under separate contract, and made a second set of CDs for teaching and research purposes within the University. The Ministry grant covered all related expenses. All four Pacific Island organisations readily agreed to participate, but each brought a set of unexpected and often frustrating circumstances. Political difficulties soon surfaced, focusing on the ownership of the materials, and not all were resolvable. And, although the digitisation and denoising proceeded smoothly, the physical quality of the analogue tapes presented challenges. Such problems, however, were complemented by bonuses, and requests for an ongoing relationship with the Archive. The overall project was successful and plans are under way for extensions elsewhere in the Pacific. On both a philosophical and practical level, it is now realistic to consider framing future archiving directions within the South Pacific in terms of clusters of regional archives in liaison with one or more central repositories.

Sound recordings as maruy among the Aborigines of the Daly region of north west Australia

2008-06-17T12:59:33Z

Title: Sound recordings as maruy among the Aborigines of the Daly region of north west Australia Authors: Marett, Allan Abstract: This paper reflects on a set of anxieties concerning the relationship between living traditions of song and dance and the body of audio recordings of these traditions that have been generated in the course of my research. To what extent can the recordings be considered representative of the performance tradition and what role do they play in my research methodology? What are the best ways to make these recordings available to the communities from which they emanated? It seems almost inevitable that we should use our recordings as a lens through which to view aspects of a musical culture, and that the imperfection of the lens should cause us concern. But how do our interlocutors regard the recordings? How are they framed within their culture? To what extent does an understanding of these matters free us from our anxieties? In this paper I will examine how people in the Daly region of North Australia locate sound recordings within their cosmology, and how they, and other Aboriginal people in northern Australia, use archival recordings as integral elements of their traditions as sources for new creativity, to assist in the recovery of forgotten songs, as educational resources and as the focal point of discussions with visiting researchers. I will also discuss ways in which these insights have affected the design of a local archive set up in 2002 in the Daly community of Belyuen.

Challenges in the repatriation of historic recordings to Papua New Guinea

2008-06-17T12:59:32Z

Title: Challenges in the repatriation of historic recordings to Papua New Guinea Authors: Niles, Don; Palie, Vincent Abstract: For over one hundred years, visitors to Papua New Guinea have been making recordings of music in our country. Prior to independence in 1975, many of these recordings ended up in archives in the countries of their collectors, in Europe, Australia, and the United States. Few of these recordings were made by music specialists and fewer still were examined in any publications. For the past twenty years, the Music Department of the Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies has been attempting to locate such historical recordings and repatriate them. In part, the goal has been to make such recordings available in the country in which they were recorded and available to the people for whom they have most value. To a large degree we have been successful in this. Our Music Archive now has copies of most such historical recordings, as well as the results of more recent research and many commercial recordings of Papua New Guinea musics. Yet, while returning recordings to an archive in the capital of Papua New Guinea is important, we have also explored ways of getting these recordings back to the descendants of those people who were recorded. We have attempted to increase interest in and knowledge about such recordings through the media, as well as return copies to appropriate individuals, centres, and archives. Such activities, however, are not easily undertaken with almost non-existent financial resources and limited interest from governmental bodies. Nevertheless, there is great interest from the descendants of those recorded. Such recordings may reveal performance practices which differ from those of today, document traditions which are now only a vague memory of elders, or reconfirm the continuity of cultural transmission over the past century. We are constantly seeking new ways to make these ancestral voices heard again.

Searching for meaning in the Library of Babel: field semantics and problems of digital archiving

2008-06-17T13:00:00Z

Title: Searching for meaning in the Library of Babel: field semantics and problems of digital archiving Authors: Evans, Nicholas; Sasse, Hans-Jürgen Abstract: Languages are made up of linguistic signs, each of which is a conventional pairing of a form and a meaning. In spoken languages, the form is sound; in signed languages, it is a visual sign. A central task in documenting any spoken language is to lay bare the processes and structures - grammatical, lexical and prosodic - by which its speakers infer meaning from sound, and produce sound to express meaning. Technological advances in recent decades have seen our ability to both record and archive these sounds advance steadily, as witnessed by the many new tools and projects discussed at this workshop. Yet the other side of language - what these recordings mean - remains problematic, and presents difficult problems for archiving that receive all too little discussion. The worst case - found all too often - is an immaculate sound recording of a passage in language, without translation - for a language about which little is known this is about as helpful as tablets in the Indus or other undeciphered scripts: we recognize that language is there, without knowing what it means. Such cases can result either from language materials that are recorded without being analysed, or through a prevalent asymmetry by which the original text is recorded, but not the process of arriving at a translation through subsequent discussion and probing. The next worst case might follow the language passage with a short explanation or partial translation in some more widely-known language such as English, e.g. by the storyteller: because such translations are rarely complete, this is far from satisfactory. Even the canonical situation, in which a full and careful translation (e.g. by the linguist) is given, conceals a host of unanswered questions: how was the translation arrived at? what other translations would have been possible? what is the semantic range of each word or other linguistic sign, used in isolation? what cultural knowledge underlies the interpretation of particular figures of speech? how did the immediate context, including gesture, setting, other participants present, and so forth, contribute to the particular translation? Did local traditions of commentary and exegesis play a role in the translation - these could include, for example, explanatory asides or further texts that arose at particular points in working over the original texts. The fact that meaning is, at least in part, inside the minds of speaker and hearer, makes it inherently more difficult to capture than sound, which is physically present. However, a range of techniques that linguists use are, in principle, documentable. Some involve links to visual presentations of one sort or another, labelled realia: the meaning of a word or expression may be illustrated by photographs (e.g. of plants) or videos (e.g. of movement types, or processes); elicitation protocols (picture books, space game or video prompts); sand diagrams drawn to illustrate schematic concepts; keyed botanical specimens; GPS references for site names. These links need not be confined to illustrating reference: they may also illustrate motivations for metaphorical or metonymic extensions of terms, e.g. by zooming in on salient shapes of body parts used in metaphors, or on habitat links (e.g. particular fish that feed on the fallen fruit of particular trees) that underlie 'sign metonymies' by which the same name may be used both for a plant and an animal found in its vicinity. Other techniques, yet to be widely used in documenting little-known languages, can be adapted from the hermeneutic methods of linked commentaries on sacred texts in, e.g. in the Talmudic, Islamic and Buddhist traditions, using hypertext to link recorded interpretive comments to primary recorded materials in as many places as necessary (Bernard Muir's Ductus project begins to do this with medieval texts). This may also include speakers volunteering example sentences or other material illustrating how to use words that crop up in texts. Further methods, such as videoing responses by one speaker to language material presented by another (e.g. in the Nijmegen space games) can furnish visual evidence of how speakers interpret directives, hence documenting the decoding aspect of meaning as well. Techniques such as the above will never capture all aspects of how a semantic analysis is arrived at - the hyperrealistic illusion that every moment of a field investigator's investigation should be captured is untenable and interferes both with the daily human interactions that form part of learning a language, and with the serendipitous moments at which investigators suddenly click what something means. However, more explicit recognition of their role, during both recording and subsequent archiving, goes some way towards correcting the current asymmetry faced in the process of documentation of form and documentation of meaning.

’Now Balanda Say We Lost Our Land in 1788’: Challenges to the Recognition of Yolŋu Law in Contemporary Australia

2008-06-17T12:56:38Z

Title: ’Now Balanda Say We Lost Our Land in 1788’: Challenges to the Recognition of Yolŋu Law in Contemporary Australia Authors: Corn, Aaron; Gumbula, Neparrŋa Abstract: This essay examines some of the cultural underpinnings of contemporary Yolŋu calls for the comprehensive recognition of their full political rights and legal jurisdiction over northeast Arnhem Land by Australian governments. Arnhem Land is an Aboriginal Land Trust that spans some 96,786 square kilometres in the tropical northeast of Australia’s Northern Territory. It is currently home to some 11,000 indigenous Australians—including some 7000 Yolŋu (People) in northeast Arnhem Land—whose hereditary ownership of land and marine estates in the region predates European settlement in Australia from 1788 by scores of millennia.

Critical choices, critical decisions: sound archiving and changing technology

2008-06-17T12:56:38Z

Title: Critical choices, critical decisions: sound archiving and changing technology Authors: Bradley, Kevin Abstract: In a relatively short period of time sound archivists have had to come to terms with some fundamental paradigm shifts in the way they approach sound archiving. For example, in December 1997, in response to the first recommendation of Bringing Them Home: Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, the Commonwealth Government announced that the National Library would be funded to develop and manage a new oral history project. At that time the National Library's well developed sound preservation strategy was at an interim stage between digital and analogue. It involved the production of analogue reel, CD and cassette duplicates of the original DAT tape using high end digital audio workstations (DAW) designed for post production of audio materials. By the time the project had reached its completion date in 2002, reel tapes had become more difficult to purchase, CD-R stock was much cheaper and of generally lower quality, DAWs specifically for audio preservation were available, and the Library had refocused its digital preservation strategy so that it relied on the Digital Object Storage System (DOSS), an in-house digital mass storage system (DMSS). The development of DMSSs brings closer the vision of a persistent and replicable archive to which sound archivists have aspired, however it also raises many issues that were not envisaged under the earlier strategies. These include the incorporation and transfer of existing digital and analogue to the storage system, the management of adequate descriptive and preservation metadata, the management of that data, the choice of carrier from which to transfer, (preservation CD or original carrier?) and many other new dilemmas with which to wrestle. These issues, coupled with the disappearance of adequate replay equipment from the market, render critical the timing and planning of what will clearly be the last transfer from a discrete carrier to an integrated system.

Multilingual Multiperson Multimedia: Linking Audio-Visual with Text Material in Language Documentation

2008-06-17T12:56:41Z

Title: Multilingual Multiperson Multimedia: Linking Audio-Visual with Text Material in Language Documentation Authors: McConvell, Patrick Abstract: Language documentation for endangered and Indigenous languages has been rapidly moving towards a more holistic view of what is to be captured, including a range of genres, conversation as well as narrative. Most of the languages concerned also exist in a multilingual, multivariety language ecology, in which different age groups may speak, and switch between different varieties. This inevitably becomes part of what is being recorded and is crucial in the understanding of language shift and maintenance. Added to this is the growing realisation of the importance of paralinguistic elements such as gesture even to the basic interpretation of utterances. For proper documentation, what is required now is a system that can handle video, audio, transcription, translation and other annotation, synchronically linked. In this paper I will investigate the functionality of the CLAN system of a/v-transcript linking, widely used for child language and multilingual studies, and briefly compare this to other available alternatives. As for archival holdings of a/v and transcriptions, most of what already exists cannot be immediately moved into such a/v-text linking systems, because of the enormous amount of work involved. There is a need however for some standard system for preliminary digital linking of a/v with existing transcripts, translations and annotations, which may be separated from each other physically and institutionally. From this, more robust linking for analysis and multimedia presentation can be developed. This paper reviews some of the systems being used and the extent to which the metadata element Relation can be refined to carry out this task.