Towards a unique archive of Aboriginal languages: a collaborative project

Charles Darwin University Library is directly helping to sustain and preserve Aboriginal language and cultural materials that encounter many hurdles for their long-term survival. The library is supporting an ARC-funded project known as the Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages, by providing a repository, web application, digitisation programme and professional advice. The collaboration between the library and research team addressed a number of challenges in relation to appropriate ways to represent complex and variable metadata, widely varying content from diverse sources and in various conditions, and in making these fragile and endangered materials accessible to a global audience. The open access archive now includes thousands of items in dozens of Northern Territory Indigenous languages, providing a sustainable repository for researchers and allowing Indigenous communities to share their languages, histories, knowledge and practices around the world. The project serves as a rich case study demonstrating how academic libraries can work with researchers to support the archiving of cultural heritage

Developing a Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages

National Foreign Language Resource CenterThe fluctuating fortunes of Northern Territory bilingual education programs in Australian languages and English have put at risk thousands of books developed for these programs in remote schools. In an effort to preserve such a rich cultural and linguistic heritage, the Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages project is establishing an open access, online repository comprising digital versions of these materials. Using web technologies to store and access the resources makes them accessible to the communities of origin, the wider academic community, and the general public. The process of creating, populating, and implementing such an archive has posed many interesting technical, cultural and linguistic challenges, some of which are explored in this pape

Shoehorning complex metadata in the Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages

The Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages is making endangered literature in Australian Indigenous languages publicly available online (Bow et al. 2014). Like any other project attempting to package a vastly complex body of work into an accessible repository, this project has grappled with a number of complex issues. Wrangling a variety of text types, languages, locations, digitisation processes, metadata and other issues into an accessible online repository requires a great deal of shoehorning

Preserving a living archive of Indigenous language material

Abstract: This paper describes how Charles Darwin Universit

Defining Responses to Therapy and Study Outcomes in Clinical Trials of Invasive Fungal Diseases: Mycoses Study Group and European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Consensus Criteria

Invasive fungal diseases (IFDs) have become major causes of morbidity and mortality among highly immunocompromised patients. Authoritative consensus criteria to diagnose IFD have been useful in establishing eligibility criteria for antifungal trials. There is an important need for generation of consensus definitions of outcomes of IFD that will form a standard for evaluating treatment success and failure in clinical trials. Therefore, an expert international panel consisting of the Mycoses Study Group and the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer was convened to propose guidelines for assessing treatment responses in clinical trials of IFDs and for defining study outcomes. Major fungal diseases that are discussed include invasive disease due to Candida species, Aspergillus species and other molds, Cryptococcus neoformans, Histoplasma capsulatum, and Coccidioides immitis. We also discuss potential pitfalls in assessing outcome, such as conflicting clinical, radiological, and/or mycological data and gaps in knowledg

Collaboratively designing an online course to teach an Australian Indigenous language at University

The lack of opportunities to study Indigenous languages at tertiary level in Australia highlights the devaluing of Indigenous languages and cultures in Australia. Innovation in methods of delivery is required, to enable Indigenous language authorities to configure their own arrangements of content and pedagogy in collaboration with university academics, to comply with the different requirements of each group. Some of the identified challenges of developing university courses for Indigenous languages include shortages of resources, teachers, students, and personal connections. This paper describes an experiment in mobilising digital technologies to develop new approaches through the collaborative design of an online university course teaching the Kunwinjku language (Bininj Kunwok) of the Northern Territory, using a Digital Language Shell. This paper argues that collaborative work in this space can serve to create new resources, teachers, students and personal connections in the learning of Indigenous languages. Such work has potential to engage Indigenous language authorities and integrate Indigenous language and knowledge practices in the academic life of Australian universities