Community access to language

This project aims to increase language manuscript access for Indigenous people. Bringing together key stakeholders with extensive experience in language revitalisation, our team will focus on complex collections held at the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) and the National Library of Australia (NLA). They are complex because a single source can include more than 30 languages that have not been identified in the holding institution’s catalogue.

Our Nyingarn Project experience has shown that sources with multiple languages, like RH Mathews in NLA and John Mathew in AIATSIS, are restricted as a whole collection rather than providing fine-grain access or partial access to communities urgently working in language revitalisation.

Our project provides a team with cultural and linguistic expertise, and the technological tools of the Nyingarn platform to reduce these access barriers.

Nyingarn offers the ability to safely add language manuscripts over time to a restricted set of users who can then identify languages within the manuscripts and so inform decisions about long-term access.