Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages
The Australian Research Council has provided funding for a digital archive of endangered literature in more than 16 Australian Indigenous languages from the NT.
This project will be a collaboration between CDU, ANU and NT DET.
We will begin with books which were produced in 25 NT Literature Production Centres in more than 16 languages between 1973 and 2000.
They are in many different places, and we need help to locate them.
We will set up a catalogue so people can check to see whether their books have been found, and an email address where we can be contacted if people find more books.
We will digitise the books, and send copies to the communities where they were originally made.
We will ask language owners for permission to put the books in the archive, invite them to make comments about the books and ask if they would be happy to be contacted for further collaborative research work.
We will convert the digital files to text files and have them checked.
With permission we will upload the digital copies, the text files, and any other related material to the archive.
We will develop interesting and useful ways for the books to be viewed.
It will be a living archive, with connections to the communities of origin.
When the archive is properly started, we will invite people to continue to add more texts into the future. Then we can talk about adding materials from other states, or from sources other than Literature Production Centres.
Contact us: livingarchive@cdu.edu.au
