Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages, Charles Darwin University (CDU), Darwin

Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages, Charles Darwin University (CDU), Darwin

• Universitaire

During the era of bilingual education in the Northern Territory, many books were produced at 20 Literature Production Centres in more than 25 languages. These materials are both widely dispersed and endangered, and contain interesting and significant stories in Indigenous Australian languages, with many beautiful illustrations.

The Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages project is creating a digital archive of this endangered literature, with permission from the language owners to make the materials available to community members, researchers and other interested parties through a searchable and extensible online repository. The result aims to be a living archive with connections to the communities where the books belong.

The project was funded in 2012 by the Australian Research Council, with partner agencies:

• Charles Darwin University (CDU)
• Australian National University and
• Northern Territory Department of Education and Children’s Services.
  Since the project began in February 2012, work commenced on 16 collections of material. Over 2500 different titles have been digitised and prepared for uploading to the CDU Library eSpace digital repository.

A successful second application to the Australian Research Council allowed the project team to expand the archive beyond the original bilingual schools, and to engage people in using the materials contained in the archive. Alongside existing partners, the Northern Territory Department of Education and the Australian National University, new partners joined the project:

• Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education,
• Northern Territory Library and
• Northern Territory Catholic Education Office.
  For further information, see http://livingarchive.cdu.edu.au/background/

Materials in Indigenous languages of the Northern Territory.

Stage 2 collections policy:

• Texts by Aboriginal authors in NT Languages only (these could include unpublished stories, texts from theses, newly created texts, in either hard copy or in digital form.)
• Related objects (audio visual materials, photos, audio, e-books – already digitised) are to be included only as ‘related objects’ if related to texts.
  For further details, see http://livingarchive.cdu.edu.au/collections-policy/

A digital repository of endangered literature in Indigenous languages of the Northern Territory.

See https://livingarchive.cdu.edu.au/faqs/ for videos on using the site.

The materials in the Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages are available under a Creative Commons Australia license (BY-NC-ND).

Stories and pictures in this work belong to the Aboriginal language owners, creators of the work and their descendants.

For further information, see http://laal.cdu.edu.au/site/permission

Entered 21 April 2018

• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders (Thematic area)
• Arts and Culture (Thematic area)
• Éducation (Thematic area)
• Indigenous (Thematic area)
• Langue (Thematic area)