Memory Place

History

Memory Place has developed from a need first identified by the former Linguist of Groote Eylandt Linguistics, Dr Julie Waddy who worked for thirty years on Groote Eylandt until the end of 2005. Dr Waddy imagined that an interactive database would be the ideal way to make the vast amount and wide range of resources held by the Linguistics centre available to the community in a meaningful way.

The resources collected over the past 90 years include:

• clan songs and stories (many transcribed and translated);
• a comprehensive corpus of Indigenous plant and animal knowledge, paired with donated high-quality images;
• totemic information;
• mapping data;
• art photos;
• genealogical data not yet digitised;
• photos of people and events; and
• the Anindilyakwa dictionary.

Through consultation with researchers and professionals in the area of Indigenous Knowledge Systems, it was discovered that current solutions did not adequately encompass the variety and depth of information available on Groote Eylandt. Furthermore the interconnectedness of Indigenous Knowledge was not recognised and reflected in current solutions.

It was decided that a new system should be built, using the Groote Eylandt resources to populate a prototype. However, the major aim of this project is to build a system generic enough for deployment throughout Australian Indigenous commununities, that will be able to accommodate a variety of Knowledge Systems. Ongoing collaboration with researchers, professionals and other Indigenous communities will ensure that this aim is realised.

Over the past year our team has been assessing available software and speaking with a wide variety of interested parties. In November 2005 a working group of people from Government agencies, universities and Indigenous communities, attended a workshop at NT Library offices to discuss the development of software to address the issues in Indigenous knowledge conservation.

At this workshop interest was expressed in collaborating to produce software and protocols that see the best aspects of their current systems extended further, and new additions made to develop a system that reflects the interconnectedness of Indigenous knowledge.

Some of the additions that are required to enhance existing systems are:

• to allow greater flexibility in the storage of metadata referring to media items;
• to capture the interrelatedness of different aspects of data;
• to integrate GIS mapping capabilities;
• to store and display genealogical information based on an Indigenous kinship structure; and
• to add pictorial search functions, and a 'fuzzy' search engine to facilitate accurate word searches, given the variations possible for spelling words, particularly names of people and places.