Academic fieldwork data collections are often unique and unrepeatable records of highly significant events collected at considerable expense of researcher time, effort and resources. While fieldworkers have been quick to take advantage of digital technologies to enable them to collect and organise their data, standards and workflows are only now beginning to emerge to assist researchers to submit their data for archiving and access. Even equipped with the best training, equipment and intentions, fieldworkers very often (if not always) find their data collection activities constrained in unpredictable ways by contingencies that arise in the field. With the increasing use of digital methods of data capture and organisation, the sustainability and curation services offered by archives and institutional repositories are needed more than ever.

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This collection of refereed papers from the conference of the same name held at the University of Sydney in December 2006 provides a record of recent research practice by fieldworkers in linguistics, botany and anthropology, and by archive and repository managers.

Alongside the refereed proceedings available in this collection, five mp3 podcasts of unpublished papers given at the conference are also available for download.

To purchase a hard copy of the proceedings please visit the Sydney University Press web site.