PARADISEC is a digital archive of records of some of the many small cultures and languages of the world. Our research group has developed models to ensure that the archive can provide access to interested communities, and conforms with emerging international standards for digital archiving.
We have established a framework for accessioning, cataloguing and digitising audio, text and visual material, and preserving digital copies. A primary goal is to safely preserve material that would otherwise be lost. In this way we can make field recordings available to the people and communities recorded, and to their descendants.
The archive provides a place for Sydney Conservatorium of Music researchers to preserve and provide access to their valuable fieldwork materials. These include; Michael Webb’s audio-visual recordings collected during his PhD fieldwork in Rabaul in the 1990s, Linda Barwick’s extensive collection of Italian popular music performance, Myfany Turpin’s interviews with elders who remember the Wanji Wanji travelling song, Jodie Kell’s audiovisual recordings and images collected during her PhD research with West Arnhem Land female musicians and Steven Gagau’s collection of old analogue tape recordings from his community in East New Britain in Papua New Guinea.
The Sydney Lab provides a range of digitisation services including reel to reel, cassette tape, photographic scans and our preservation laboratory deals with a range of issues such as mouldy tapes, sticky tape and vinegar syndrome. We support researchers with fieldwork equipment that is available for borrowing as well as logistical support and advice. Our catalog is an Open Source media management system called Nabu, which allows depositors to create robust descriptions of their multimedia collections, and provides access through a range of search options. Our systems conform to international standards for digital archiving and in 2019 PARADISEC received the international Core Trust Seal based on the DSA-WDS Core Trustworthy Data Repositories Requirements.
Funding Source: The Department of Internal Affairs/Pacific Development and Conservation Trust (NZ)
This project aims to archive the valuable materials recorded by the Wantok Musik Foundation over the past 22 years. The Australian based foundation established a Music Label which represents First Nations artists from Australia, Melanesia and Oceania. Wantok Musik has cultivated cultural exchange to record, release and promote music and the result is an extensive collection of audio recordings, films, images and text describing the artists and their music. Working closely with the Wantok Musik team, including founding director David Bridie and board member Steven Gagau, the project aims to archiving these materials for safekeeping into the future, as well as opening up access for interested communities and individuals who want to connect to the languages, music and dance and cultural materials.
Funding Source: Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC)
PARADISEC is a partner in the Language Data Commons of Australia (LDaCA), an integrated national infrastructure that supports language work and language research. It enables researchers and communities to access and use nationally significant collections of written, spoken, multi-modal and signed language.
The project aims to: improve researchers’ digital skills and raising awareness of best practice in digital research; render valuable collections of national significance more findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR) while adhering to CARE principles; design a metadata ecosystem for language research based on Research Object Crate (RO Crate). In so doing, it supports researchers to deliver innovative research outcomes and opens up the social and economic possibilities of Australia’s language data for translational research in the national interest.
Nick Thieberger (University of Melbourne) in collaboration with University of Sydney team: Amanda Harris and Jodie Kell and ANU staff Julia Miller
Funding: Australia Research Council Linkage Project
The project aims to reconnect Warlpiri communities with past documentation and recordings of their cultural heritage. Centred in Yuendumu, the project expects to unpack the significance of past documentation of cultural heritage for present day Warlpiri people who live in vastly different social worlds from their forebears. Through collaborations between the University of Sydney and PARADISEC with Warlpiri families, and Partner Organisation, Pintupi Anmatyerr Warlpiri (PAW) Media and Communications, the project will see the set up of activities to engage with these materials and the production of resources for use by future generations.
PARADISEC is a collaboration between The University of Sydney, University of Melbourne and the Australian National University.
