DIGITAL AUDIO ARCHIVING WORKSHOP 30 September-1 October 2003

Researchers, communities, institutions and sound recordings:
Research implications and feasibility of distributed digital archives for  ethnographic sound material in Australia's geographic region

sponsored by the Australian Academy of the Humanities and the University of Sydney Research Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences. Hosted by the School of Society Culture and Performance (now known as the School of Letters, Art, and Media), Faculty of Arts, University of Sydney, and PARADISEC
Seminar Room 148, R.C. Mills Building,  University of Sydney, 30 September-1 October 2003

A selection of the refereed papers from the workshop was published online through the Public Knowledge Project's Open Conference Management System:  http://conferences.arts.usyd.edu.au/index.php?cf=2 and full text pdfs of the refereed papers are now available through the University of Sydney's eScholarship Repository.

Read some of the participants' comments on the workshop

Below is a list of papers from the workshop program.  Click on the title to link to the abstracts.  PowerPoint presentations, papers and handouts are available for download from some presenters. For full details of the programme, abstracts and the refereed versions of relevant papers, see the conference website.

Session 1: Community interests in ethnographic sound materials: access and ethical issues

Andrew Pawley, Australian National University
"The need for a Pacific languages archive"  (View Presentation RTF)

Don Niles and Vincent Palie, Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies
"Challenges in the Repatriation of Historic Recordings to Papua New Guinea"  (View presentation RTF)

John Bowden, Australian National University
"Archiving sound materials from East Timor: community involvement in a brand new country"  (View PowerPoint Presentation 1.47MB)

Joe Neparrnga Gumbula, Galiwin'ku Knowledge Centre
"Galiwin'ku Indigenous Knowledge Centre: A Gupapuyngu Daygurrgurr perspective"

Peter Toner, Australian National University
"The Repatriation of Digitized Audio to Yolngu Communities"  (View presentation RTF)

Session 2: Australian collections in a global context: standards, metadata and interoperability

Peter Austin, SOAS, University of London
"The Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, and some global and local issues in archiving ethnographic sound material from Australia's geographic region"

Ian Gilmour, Screensound Australia
"Sound Technologies" (View PowerPoint Presentation 537KB)

Kevin Bradley, National Library of Australia
"Audio replay and storage systems: critical equipment maintenance, storage and timing issues"    (View PowerPoint Presentation 1.99MB)

Steven Bird, University of Melbourne
"The Open Language Archive Community and digital infrastructure for archive interoperability"    (View PowerPoint presentation 326KB)

Markus Buchhorn and Stuart Hungerford, Australian National University
"Advanced networks and services and their role in managing web access to large audio archives"    (View PowerPoint presentation 700KB)

Session 3: Case studies and area examples

Nick Evans and Hans-Jürgen Sasse, University of Melbourne
"Searching for meaning in the Library of Babel: some thoughts of three field semanticists"

Grace Koch and Jane Anderson, AIATSIS
"The politics of context: issues for the law, researchers and the creation of databases"    (View PowerPoint presentation 522KB)

Allan Marett, University of Sydney
"Recordings and Maruy: The conception of sound recordings among the Aborigines of the Daly region of north west Australia" (View presentation PDF)

Richard Moyle, University of Auckland
"Digital Encounters with Pacific Island Radio and Television Archives"    (View presentation RTF)

William Foley, University of Sydney
"Language and Language Endangerment in New Guinea"

Session 4: Tools for transcription and annotation of digital audio

Peter Wittenburg, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
"Archiving Strategies for Multimedia Language Documentation"  (View PowerPoint presentation 2.53MB)

Patrick McConvell, AIATSIS
"Multilingual Multiperson Multimedia:  Linking Audio, Video and Transcription for Analysis and Archives"    (View PowerPoint Presentation 1.45MB)

Brett Baker, University of New England
"AudioText Linking Tool"    (View HTML or PDF version of presentation)

Jane Simpson, University of Sydney
"Representing information about words digitally"    (View PowerPoint presentation 1.10MB)

Linda Barwick, University of Sydney, and David Nash (ANU)
"Reports on PARADISEC and ASEDA"  (View Barwick PowerPoint presentation 610KB)

Public reception and launch of PARADISEC, followed by

2003 Hook Lecture by Professor Anthony Seeger, UCLA
"New Technology Requires New Collaborations: Changing Ourselves to Better Shape the Future"