From Manuscript to Machine: Advancing Access to Cultural Heritage with OCR & HTR Tools

PARADISEC contains, at an informed guess, in the 10s-of-thousands of pages of handwritten notes relating to the languages and cultures of the Pacific region. Many of those pages pertain directly to audio-visual media also housed in the archive, such as audio or video files, and the pages might include transcriptions, translations, explanations, notes, etc, of … Read more

Hosting interns from Manchester Uni

PARADISEC has been happy to host three student interns from University of Manchester, from February to April, 2024. The 20 day internship is part of University of Manchester’s Master of Arts programs, which we became aware of thanks to an email from University of Manchester in late 2023. Two of the students are completing the … Read more

Using Raspberry Pi in Ranongga

By guest blogger Debra McDougall I thought I’d write a short update to Nick’s post on 21 January 2024 about using the Raspberry Pi to return legacy recordings to people in Ranongga, Solomon Islands. These recordings were digitised in 2019-2020 with the support of an ELDP Legacy Materials Grant (0609), a project led by myself and … Read more

PARADISEC Activity Update – December 2023

Some highlights from the second half of 2023: * We celebrated our 20th anniversary year with wonderful events at Verge Gallery (University of Sydney), in April, and then in November at University of Melbourne. For display at the parties, Julia Miller put together a great 10-minute showreel of video from the archive, it’s on Youtube … Read more

Responding to Archival Collections with Song

The PNG Peroveta Singers of Canberra Jodie Kell and Steven Gagau PARADISEC in collaboration with PNG Peroveta Singers of Canberra and Holy Cross Anglican Church & St Margaret’s Uniting Church held a launch event of Toksave Podcast episodes 13 & 14. The launch was well attended by about 50 people including families, friends, colleagues & … Read more

Regional impact: amplifying traditional performance culture

An article published in the internal University of Sydney staff news by Melanie Crook on 20 November 2023 (reposted with permission) In this limited series we speak to University of Sydney colleagues who are making a positive impact in regional communities. Associate Professor Myfany Turpin, Jodie Kell and Dr Georgia Curran share a commitment to preserving … Read more

Stereopsis In the Archive

Lachlan Thompson is currently working as an intern at PARADISEC through the Aurora Internship Program. He recently completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts and Arts at UNSW and is hoping to study again next year. As an intern from the Aurora Program, I was unsure if my skill set would fit with PARADISEC. I don’t … Read more

Elan file viewer

We were sent a set of Elan files to add to the PARADISEC collection. It is hard to know what is in each Elan file in a large set without opening them to view the contents. We made the Elan file viewer to deal with this issue. You can select a folder of .eaf files … Read more