Research, Records and Responsibility: Ten Years of PARADISEC

The Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC) has been on the cutting edge of digital archiving, building a significant historical collection and community of practice engaged in the preservation and accessibility of research materials.

Over the ten years of PARADISEC's operation, the repository has grown to represent over 860 languages from across the world, including cultural materials from the Pacific region and South-East Asia, North America, Africa and Europe. With over 5000 hours of audio, the extent of the archival material, as well as the inclusion of a variety of styles such as songs, narratives and elicitation, has resulted in an invaluable resource for researchers and communities alike.

PARADISEC's innovation in archival practice allows communities to access original recordings of their own cultural heritage, and provides fieldworkers with a wealth of primary material.

Research, Records and Responsibility explores developments in collaborative archiving practice between archives and the communities they serve and represent, incorporating case studies of historical recordings, visual data and material culture. It brings together the work of Australian and international scholars commemorating ten years of PARADISEC, and reflects on the development of research and language archiving.

About the editors

Amanda Harris is Research Associate and Operations Manager at PARADISEC, University of Sydney.

Nick Thieberger is ARC Future Fellow in the School of Languages and Linguistics at the University of Melbourne and Director of PARADISEC.

Linda Barwick is Professor and Associate Dean Research at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, and Director of the Sydney Unit of PARADISEC.

Contents

• PARADISEC: its history and future by Nick Thieberger, Amanda Harris and Linda Barwick
• Through the lens of performance and performativity: reframing the research quality and impact of ethnographic digital research archives by Daniela Kaleva
• Reproducible research in descriptive linguistics: integrating archiving and citation into the postgraduate curriculum at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa by Andrea L. Berez
• On the reach of digital language archives by David Nathan
• KinOath Kinship Archiver: genealogical and social relations by Peter Withers
• Shoehorning complex metadata in the Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages by Catherine Bow, Michael Christie and Brian Devlin
• Reviewing, reconstructing and reinterpreting ethnographic data on musical instruments in archives and museums by Jennifer C. Post
• Repatriating childhood: issues in the ethical return of Venda children's musical materials from the archival collection of John Blacking by Andrea Emberly
• Repatriation and innovation in and out of the field: the impact of legacy recordings on endangered dance-song traditions and ethnomusicological research by Sally Treloyn and Rona Googninda Charles
• The Western Australian New Music Archive: performing as remembering by Cat Hope, Lisa MacKinney, Lelia Green, Meghan Travers and Tos Mahoney

Amanda Harris is an ARC Future Fellow at Sydney Conservatorium of Music, The University of Sydney and Director of the Sydney Unit of PARADISEC.

Nick Thieberger is an Associate Professor in Linguistics at the University of Melbourne, and the Director of PARADISEC.

Linda Barwick is a musicologist collaborating with First Nations communities in Australia since 1985 and Italian communities since 1979. She is currently Emeritus Professor at the University of Sydney, Sydney Conservatorium of Music.