https://hdl.handle.net/2123/13308 2026-06-04T20:17:38Z 2026-06-04T20:17:38Z Toner, Peter https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1518 2026-05-04T06:57:25Z 2004-01-01T00:00:00Z

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

2004-01-01T00:00:00Z Simpson, Jane https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1517 2026-05-04T06:57:27Z 2004-01-01T00:00:00Z

Representing information about words digitally Simpson, Jane 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.

2004-01-01T00:00:00Z Evans, Nicholas Sasse, Hans-Jürgen https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1509 2026-05-04T06:57:26Z 2004-01-01T00:00:00Z

Searching for meaning in the Library of Babel: field semantics and problems of digital archiving Evans, Nicholas; Sasse, Hans-Jürgen 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.

2004-01-01T00:00:00Z Corn, Aaron Gumbula, Neparrŋa https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1508 2026-05-04T06:57:26Z 2004-01-01T00:00:00Z

’Now Balanda Say We Lost Our Land in 1788’: Challenges to the Recognition of Yolŋu Law in Contemporary Australia Corn, Aaron; Gumbula, Neparrŋa 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.

2004-01-01T00:00:00Z Moyle, Richard https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1512 2026-05-04T06:57:25Z 2004-01-01T00:00:00Z

Digital encounters with Pacific Island Radio and Television Archives Moyle, Richard 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.

2004-01-01T00:00:00Z Marett, Allan https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1511 2026-05-04T06:57:25Z 2004-01-01T00:00:00Z

Sound recordings as maruy among the Aborigines of the Daly region of north west Australia Marett, Allan 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.

2004-01-01T00:00:00Z Anderson, Jane Koch, Grace https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1513 2026-05-04T06:57:26Z 2004-01-01T00:00:00Z

The politics of context: issues for law, researchers and the creation of databases Anderson, Jane; Koch, Grace 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.

2004-01-01T00:00:00Z Pawley, Andrew https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1514 2026-05-04T06:57:26Z 2004-01-01T00:00:00Z

Introduction: The need for a Pacific languages archive Pawley, Andrew 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?

2004-01-01T00:00:00Z Niles, Don Palie, Vincent https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1510 2026-05-04T06:57:27Z 2004-01-01T00:00:00Z

Challenges in the repatriation of historic recordings to Papua New Guinea Niles, Don; Palie, Vincent 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.

2004-01-01T00:00:00Z Bradley, Kevin https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1431 2026-05-04T06:57:25Z 2004-01-01T00:00:00Z

Critical choices, critical decisions: sound archiving and changing technology Bradley, Kevin 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.

2004-01-01T00:00:00Z McConvell, Patrick https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1429 2026-05-04T06:57:27Z 2004-01-01T00:00:00Z

Multilingual Multiperson Multimedia: Linking Audio-Visual with Text Material in Language Documentation McConvell, Patrick 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.

2004-01-01T00:00:00Z