Newsletter #5

December 2012

PROJECT UPDATE
As we reach the end of 2012, we are delighted with the progress of the project so far. Here's a brief look of where we're at right now:

• We're working with materials from 16 'collections' (mix of languages and communities around the NT)
• 11 locations visited by the Project Manager, and many more by DET staff in Central Australia
• 400 titles completely ready to go including presentation version in PDF format, Unicode text file, preservation files in TIFF format
• 2000 more titles still in preparation
• 4 casual staff in Darwin (and one in Adelaide) working on digitisation, Optical Character Recognition (OCR), updating metadata
• Local indigenous staff in schools continuing digitisation on location
• Permission still being sought from original creators of the materials (authors, illustrators, photographers, storytellers, editors, translators)
• Some recordings being made of people reading the stories - to create talking 'e-books'
• Steven McPhillips is busy developing the archive interface to access materials on computer, tablet or smart phone
• Public presentations about the project given at Top End Linguistic Circle, Food For Thought (CDU), Open Access Week (CDU) and Australian Linguistics Society annual conference (UWA)
• Team worked with a small group of Masters of Information Technology students to develop an online glossarising tool
• 3 journal articles in preparation
• good connections made with AuSIL, IAD, Apple, NT Library, National Library of Australia, APdigital (NZ), Linguasoft, Batchelor Institute, and many others, including of course many of the schools and communities involved in the production of the materials in our archive
• our graphic designer Trevor van Weeren is working on a colourful map with samples of books and the locations of source materials - still a few adjustments needed but here's the current draft

ON LOCATION
In November, Cathy Bow and Melanie Wilkinson visited Numbulwar school. It was great to see Wubuy language classes in progress while we were sorting through all the materials.

In Central Australia, Sam Moore has been busy cataloguing and scanning the collection at Yipirinya School, where there were several filing cabinets filled with materials in Western Arrernte, Central Arrernte and Luritja languages. Susan Moore also returned to Ltyentye Apurte to meet with community members about putting their Eastern Arrernte materials online and to finish scanning the last of that collection.

Cathy also presented at the Australian Linguistics Society's annual conference in Perth last week, speaking on Managing roles, goals and priorities in the Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages. It was good to connect with other linguists and researchers interested in what we're doing.

FAREWELLS AND WISHES
We are sad to farewell Teresa Händel as she returns to Germany to complete her Masters degree, then on to Cambridge for further studies. Teresa has been an incredibly valuable member of the LAAL team, working on digitisation, OCRing, metadata spreadsheets, handling collections of books, writing up procedures and supervising new staff. We are delighted that she will continue some casual work for the project remotely, and we wish her well in her future endeavours.

We'd like to take the opportunity to thank everyone who's been involved in assisting, supporting and advising us throughout 2012. On behalf of the project team of Michael Christie, Brian Devlin and Cathy Bow, we wish you all a ...

Happy Christmas and have a wonderful new year