AIATSISThe Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies

Library Services in the Indigenous Context, UTS, Sydney, 27 November 2008

AIATSIS - Building a keeping place for the futureRod Stroud, AIATSIS Library

Email: rod.stroud@aiatsis.gov.au

AIATSISThe Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies

The Challenge

AIATSISThe Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies

2020 Summit

• “There was general agreement that culture, art and symbols are vitally important both for preservation of culture and for recognition. To quote a report from one discussion group, ‘We know the summit will have been a success when the Prime Minister speaks an Aboriginal language in 2020’.

• Final Report of the Australia 2020 Summit, Options for the future of Indigenous Australia.

AIATSISThe Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies

We were asked to Think Big !

• The 2020 Forum on Indigenous Issues in April 2008 produced the key idea

• The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies should be used to provide support to regional knowledge centres, through a memorandum of understanding. The regional knowledge centres need to use existing facilities and have more resources invested in existing infrastructure to transform current Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural centres into the future. With two programs—one with material accessible to the general public and a second with information solely for the local Indigenous people

AIATSISThe Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies

AIATSIS Keeping Place

• The AIATSIS Library is implementing various strategies in creating a digital keeping place to preserve and provide access wherever possible in assisting remote clients and providing support to other libraries and archives

• These strategies will be outlined throughout this paper

AIATSISThe Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies

Background on AIATSIS

AIATSIS was established in 1964 with its own Act and updated in 1989.

AIATSIS undertakes and encourages scholarly, ethical community-based research, holds a priceless collection of films, photographs, video and audio recordings and the world’s largest collections of printed and other resource materials for Indigenous Studies, and has its own publishing house, Aboriginal Studies Press.

AIATSISThe Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies

Audiovisual Archive • The AIATSIS Audiovisual Archive holds a collection of

moving image, recorded sound and photographic materials.  Its vaults contain approximately 45,000 hours of recorded sound, 650,000 photographic images, 6000 video titles, 1000 artefacts and approximately 6 1/2 million feet of motion picture film. 

• The majority of the items held in the Audiovisual Archive represent the primary results of field research funded by the AIATSIS Research Grants Program as well as historical and contemporary items which have been deposited by individuals, families or organisations for safe-keeping and appropriate access.  The material is unique and irreplaceable and provides an invaluable link between past, present and future generations of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

AIATSISThe Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies

Critical Issues

• Easier ways to discover where collections are held• Coordinated digitisation programs will need to be funded,• Preservation – there are collections, particularly of

audiovisual material at extreme risk where immediate responses are required,

• Rights management – substantial work needs to be done to determine ownership to correctly return materials,

• Existing infrastructure of databases, thesauri and metadata to accurately describe materials,

• Central or distributed digital backup centres for communities,• Interconnection with Federal Government broadband

initiatives to remote areas,• Education and employment for Indigenous community

officers to support these initiatives.

AIATSISThe Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies

Our Story – Digital Access in Communities

• Used in 13 Library and Knowledge Centres in the Northern Territory

• Enables the community to establish a unique digital collection of local knowledge by creating, adding and repatriating content related to their own culture and history. It is connected very much to literacy

• Under further development and a pathway for digital return from collecting agencies

AIATSISThe Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies

ATSILIRN Protocols

• ATSILIRN Protocol - Description and Classification of Materials

• Develop, implement and use a national thesaurus for describing documentation relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and issues.

• Develop and use subject headings and guidelines for archival description which are sensitive to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and which promote effective retrieval.

• Improve access by the introduction of classificatory systems which describe items by their geographic, language and cultural identifiers.

AIATSISThe Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies

AIATSIS Thesauri – Describing Indigenous Collections

• 3 thesauri – subject, language and place• Redeveloped over the last 3 years• Provide appropriate descriptions of oue collections• Accessible on the web and links to the Mura

catalogue• Internationally recognised by LC and used in

Libraries Australia and OCLC’s Worldcat

AIATSISThe Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies

Thinking Globally, Acting Locally

• AIATSIS is building a digital archive containing:• Collections of the Audiovisual Archives, mainly at

risk audiotapes, photographs, film, video etc.• The Library’s public digitisation programs• Physical digital collections – CD-ROMs etc

• Digital items gathered from elsewhere

AIATSISThe Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies

Our Collections – Challenges

• Substantial parts of the AIATSIS audiovisual collections are not open to the public for cultural or personal reasons.

• There is unidentified material that can’t yet be released until it can be identified

• This involves substantial research

AIATSISThe Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies

Gathering From Elsewhere

• The AIATSIS Library is gathering digital copies of copyright-free books, serials from:

• Google Books, Gutenberg Project, Internet Archive, Open Content Alliance etc

AIATSISThe Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies

Beyond the One Keeping Place

• The traditional view of collections is that they remain in the library/archive that holds them –digitisation changes that

• Returning collections – bringing culture back home is both a short and long-term goal for AIATSIS

AIATSISThe Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies

Return of Collections – via request

• The Audiovisual Archive recognises the importance of providing copies of material to the communities from which they originated.

• At present, Indigenous people that request archival materials through the Access Unit may obtain copies of up to 20 items (or excerpts from items) that relate specifically to their language group or their family, free of charge. 

AIATSISThe Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies

Return of Collections – via community visits

• The Audiovisual Archive has visited communities at Cherbourg, Palm Island, Fitzroy Crossing and Brewarrina

• Protocols – for engaging with Indigenous communities and access to materials have been developed,

• Workshops – for training communities in the care of records

AIATSISThe Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies

Return of Our Collections – digitally

• AIATSIS is a national Indigenous knowledge centre

• One of our roles is to be a backup for collections that have their home in many places around Australia

• Our digital archive (Digitool) will be able to deliver digital files to Our Story or similar in the future for Indigenous knowledge centres, communities etc

AIATSISThe Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies

From Catalogue to Discovery

• Many Library public catalogue interfaces have not kept up to date with web 2.0

• AIATSIS has chosen Primo Direct

• This will allow clients to go beyond our existing catalogue to access our open digital resources, finding aids etc.

• Primo supports consortiums

AIATSISThe Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies

Related Issues

• AIATSIS is also developing Austlang – a major resource on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages

• Austlang is directly connected to Mura and the language thesaurus

AIATSISThe Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies

New Directions for Access – Geospatial Browsing

• Geospatial Browsing – our language and place thesauri contain 250,000 map grid references

• We are investigating with Geoscience Australia on “browse by map” with Primo converting our data to XML

• The combination of geospatial and faceting will be a place discovery tool

AIATSISThe Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies

Where To Now ?

• There are more things to do to achieve the outcomes raised

• AIATSIS is committed to the long-term goal of supporting IKCs around the country in the digital return of our collections and in working with state libraries to achieve these outcomes. The future is for us to plan.