Director
Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning
University of Technology
Sydney
Australia
Professor Martin Nakata will be presenting a keynote on Towards Standards and Protocols for Digitising Indigenous Materials for use in the Public Domain on Monday.
The place of Indigenous Knowledge in the public domain is a sensitive and at times contentious issue yet there is an ever-increasing demand from indigenous communities for access to their information in public institutions. So, what protocols and processes can public institutions use sensitively to prepare indigenous materials for the public domain? And what constitutes indigenous knowledge information materials among the extensive records of Australasian institutions?
Professor Nakata will speak to these issues by drawing from a collaborative research project with three state libraries in Australia to map the current preparation process for digitising indigenous materials. The project is studying how the institutions currently resolve indigenous knowledge issues, intellectual property protection, digital rights management issues, legislation requirements and/or acts relating to their collections, etc.
This initial research is to help set up a much larger collaboration on the issues across a range of cultural institutions, e.g. archives, libraries, museums & galleries from 2008. All this is, of course, to make some progress towards standards and protocols for institutions in the preparation of indigenous materials in digital formats for the public domain.
