National Library of Australia


Pacific And Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures

Project participants: Lead organisation: University of Sydney
Partner organisations: University of Melbourne,
Australian National University
Contact officer/s: Nick Thieberger, Project Manager, (email nickt@paradisec.org.au, phone 03 8344 5185)
Project description: The project aims to digitise audio taped ethnographic material and to provide metadata and a search mechanism for locating the material. Files are stored on the APAC facility in Canberra and will be available on demand.
URL of site: http://www.paradisec.org.au
URL for project information:
Content:
Digitisation policy and priorities:
Timetable: Continuing Project.
Budget and funding: ~$280,000 LIEF ARC funding for a one-year pilot project in 2003
Staff resources: Digitisation of audio-tapes is conducted in-house on a Quadriga operated by an audio preservation officer located in the Sydney University Linguistics Department.
Technical standards: Digitised material consists of sound recordings.
Masters are digitised at 24bit, 96kHz, and stored as Broadcast Wave Format (BWF) files. Downsampled copies (16bit 44kHz) are provided to depositors and MP3 versions are placed on a website for distibution by password access.
Cataloguing and indexing: We follow the Open Languages Archives Community (OLAC) (http://www.language-archives.org/ ) metadata recommendations and adapt them with reference to the NLA and other relevant standards. Parts of the metadata are encapsulated with the BWF file. Other metadata is generated by the digitisation process and is incorporated into the catalogue.
Comments:

Project managers wishing to update the details of their Australian digitisation projects, should email the changes to alg@nla.gov.au.

Last modified: August 09 2004.