PARADISEC now holds 177 collections containing 7,516 items and 59,083 files that are 5.59 TB in size. There are 3,310 hours of audio recordings in the collection. The catalog of these collections can be viewed via the Australian National Data Service, or the Open Language Archives Community or the Virtual Language Observatory.
Since our last report, Nick Fowler-Gilmore, the Audio Preservation Officer in the Sydney office, has completed the digitisation of Calvin Roesler‘s tapes (CR1) the last of which were his 1959 recordings in Asmat. See the fieldnotes and a summary of the collection at http://www.paradisec.org.au/fieldnotes/ROES/web/ROES001.htm.
Nick is now working on the digitisation of a collection of the Italian Folk Ensemble and associated groups (Adelaide, South Australia), 1980s-1990s, collected by Antonio Comin.
Julia Miller at ANU has started accessioning Mary Ayres‘ collection of 19 audio cassettes recording numerous dialects from two language groups in the Morehead District, Western Province, Papua New Guinea between Oct 1979 – Oct 1981. They are mostly secular (and sometimes comic and bawdy) stories with translations (not transcriptions) into English provided by native speakers of the dialect. Julia will also be accessioning the Murray Groves collection of 35 audio reels containing songs, stories and discussions in Motu and various languages from PNG (Porebada, Manumanu), Samoa, Tonga. Topics include hiri, lakotoi iduhu, gaba turia, helaga, ehona and other religious prophet songs.
The Roderick Lacey collection is now complete as the Melbourne unit has digitised 120 tape recordings related to his PhD Dissertation, ‘Oral traditions as history: An exploration of oral sources among the Enga of the New Guinea Highlands’, 1971- 1974′. These tapes originally came from the ANU Archives. Also digitised in Melbourne are Cathy Falk‘s field recordings of music made in the 1970s in Indonesia, and Barry Alpher‘s 13 cassettes of Cape York recordings.
Other collections that have been worked on recently by depositors improving the quality of their metadata, are Valerie Guerin‘s Mavea recordings; Gary Holton‘s Lamma collection (metadata not yet published); Adrian Clynes‘ audio/video recordings of Tutong speakers from Brunei Darussalam; Margaret Carew‘s Gun-nartpa and Burarra audio recordings from Gochan Jiny-jirra and Maningrida; and Lauren Gawne‘s audio recordings of Lamjung Yolmo from the Namgyu region of Nepal.
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