Using LAAL at Monash Uni

Dr Alice Gaby from Monash University shares how she used the Living Archive in the undergraduate linguistics course “

I got the students to use the archive for various short homework exercises. For example:

  • Find a likely instance of nominal morphology.
  • Is there any evidence of allomorphy?
  • If so, what are the allomorphs and what are their respective distributions?
  • What is the most likely function of this morpheme?

The students also used the archive to complete a project in which they constructed a part of a learner’s grammar on the basis of the primers/readers and similar. For example, one group had a plain-language explanation of how grammatical relations are expressed (e.g. “how you know who is doing the action and who is affected by it”). The students really loved working with the real language materials.

I suggested to the LAAL team that it would be useful to be able to copy and paste the citation reference for the books the students used. Now they’ve added that feature, it will be really useful next time I run the Australian languages unit (first semester 2016).

If you have a story to share about how you’ve used materials from the Living Archive, let us know! 

Worawa students love the Living Archive!

Sally Cunningham from Worawa College visited us in Darwin recently, and shared with us about how the school is using materials from the Living Archive.

logo_worawa

Worawa Aboriginal College is a girls’ boarding college catering for Indigenous girls in years 7-10.Worawa is located in Healesville, Victoria, about an hour’s drive east of Melbourne. The 70 students currently attending Worawa College come from across Australia, many from remote communities in the Northern Territory. Most students speak an Aboriginal language as their first language, and some students speak up to four languages, as well as English.

At Worawa College, we acknowledge the richness and diversity of our students’ languages, and we also recognise the cultural pride and strength that comes from valuing these languages in the academic program. All of our students engage with some language work within the school week, and some students are part of targeted language literacy work.

The Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages is often used in this teaching and learning. For the students who have been immersed in their language, these archives can enhance and support their reading and writing. For students who are beginning to learn their heritage language, the archives are used to explore different topics and learn new words. As language and culture is embedded across our curriculum, the archive has been used in a variety of subject areas. Language books have been used to look at bush foods in Science, and for exploring different stories for incorporation in artworks.

Students actively engage with their first or heritage languages, and also enjoy exploring the languages of their friends at Worawa. The Living Archive books can provide a link to their home communities through language and some students recognise authors, artwork and images from family members This can be very powerful for them.

By Sally Cunningham and Kathryn Gale

Technical support needed

CALL FOR EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST

FOR DEVELOPERS TO INTEGRATE AN API WITH the LIVING ARCHIVE OF ABORIGINAL LANGUAGES WEB APPLICATION

BACKGROUND

The Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages is a digital collection of endangered literature in Australian Indigenous languages from around the Northern Territory. Around 3500 items have been digitised and stored in CDU Library’s eSpace: a Fedora repository managed by Fez software. Only records for which we have signed permission forms are visible on the site. Around 50% of the materials are not currently available for public viewing.  These we refer to as hidden items. A public discovery layer (the LAAL app) was built over the collection in PHP (Slim) by Stephen McPhillips. Solr handles the indexing. Javascript (jQuery, LeafletJS) enable  geospatial visualisations via a map interface at http://laal.cdu.edu.au/. The current LAAL app allows users to search, browse, read and download materials, using various devices and platforms without a login. To allow elders, authors and others in remote communities to login and perform specific tasks in the eSpace repository a REST API was developed by Catalyst IT.

THE TASKS

A. Preparation

Integrate API functionality throughout the LAAL app to allow authorised users to perform functions in eSpace such as initiate sessions, access all resources, and upload new ones. (A rich domain model is envisaged, as we wish to to avoid user interactions that are cumbersome and unmaintainable.)

B. Develop an interface to the API that handles two basic functions:

(1) logging in/ logging off by authorised users, and

(2) revealing hidden items (see above) in all LAAL app views, and indicating (perhaps by greying them out) that these are hidden. Once a working prototype is available, we would like to subject it to user testing for two weeks.

C.  Allow additional (moderated) user actions

(3) Create some forms to allow editing and file transfer. Their purpose would be to allow additional user actions:

  • Upload permission forms and attachments to a temporary holding
    • All items need to be accompanied by signed permission from the creators. This form needs to be available to download from the site, and to upload when signed.
  • Add new materials
    • Users will create new records and add relevant metadata by filling in information on a form before uploading files.
    • Users who have related items (sound files, e-books) will attach these to existing records with appropriate metadata.
  • Edit existing materials
    • Users may identify errors and propose corrections by editing metadata.
    • Users may also make corrections to text files.

Note concerning moderator actions:

  • All of the additional actions listed above need to be moderated by Living Archive project staff.
  • The simplest way to achieve that would be email notification with the actions then completed manually in eSpace by LAAL project staff.
  • The interface code should be written to enable automated actions via the Fez API at a later date.

Additional notes:

  • Access to source code and documentation about the Fez API and LAAL app can be made available on request.
  • Sufficient documentation is required to ensure that the system can be maintained by project technical staff.
  • Development of the interface will be an iterative process of refining the design based on user requirements.
  • The interface must comply with all legal requirements for accessibility.
  • All development must use existing technology in the LAAL app where possible.
  • CDU will retain all copyright on the product. The application may be released under an open source licence as part of the Fez project http://sourceforge.net/projects/fez/.

Preferred timeline

  • Stage one: applications submitted with mock-up of interface—due at the end June 2015
  • Stage two: the successful applicant will be given access to source code and asked to develop a prototype—due mid-August
  • Stage three: trial implementation leading to refinements to product in response to feedback from users—end of September
  • Stage four: final product to be delivered by the end of October 2015

How to get involved

PDF Version here

Wurrumiyanga visit

Project manager Cathy Bow recently visited Wurrumiyanga on Bathurst Island in regard to the collection of Tiwi books for the Living Archive project.

Wurrumiyanga was one of the first communities I visited when the project began in 2012, and Tiwi is still one of my favourite collections of books. Wonderful stories with incredible illustrations, good metadata (identifying who wrote and illustrated each book, what year it was published, etc.) and almost all with English translations. The Literature Production Centre at MCPS (Murrupurtiyanuwu Catholic Primary School) has a resource room with lots of copies of each book, in numerical order, some carefully packaged up to protect them from dust, all carefully preserved and easy to access.

Tiwi LPC (1)

The resource room at the Literature Production Centre at MCPS Wurrumiyanga

All the books are neatly arranged in order

I travelled with Ailsa Purdon, the language and literacy advisor from the Catholic Education Office. She spent time with Fiona and Millika, helping them develop resources for teaching Tiwi language and culture in the classrooms. They were excited to see the books on the Living Archive website, and Fiona was enjoying reading the stories aloud and explaining them to us. The illustrations she made for Ngirramini ngini Japarra amintiya Purrukuparli (The Tiwi legend of Japarra and Purrukuparli) are incredible.

Ailsa & Fiona (2)

Ailsa & Fiona exploring the Living Archive

Fiona's book

One of the many books Fiona illustrated

We met with the school principal, Daniel Graves, who was delighted to hear about the Living Archive project and keen to see it used in the classrooms. We discussed ways the materials can be used not just in Tiwi language classes, but also in history, science, English, and other parts of the school curriculum. He’s planning to get the LAAL Reader app to get all the Tiwi books on to the school’s iPads.

Dulcie

Dulcie Tipungwuti with the values of the school in Tiwi and English

Since we think it’s important to get approval from the original creators of the materials to put them on our open access website, I spent time going around the community with Dulcie Tipungwuti. She introduced me to many of the people who either worked in the LPC or were involved in telling or writing stories, or making illustrations. Everyone was happy to sign the permission form and was pleased to know that the books hadn’t been forgotten. There are still several people we haven’t found yet, but we’ll keep trying!

We bumped into Magdalen Kerinaiua who had come to the gathering of linguists and language workers we had at Batchelor last year, and who is still involved with language work at the Museum. I reminded her of the video made by ABC Open about her grandfather’s story. More of his wartime stories are available in one of the books in the LAAL collection: Ngirramini ngini Karri Ngiyarringani Kapani Yimamani Parlingarri (Purraputimali) (Memories of my father Louie Munkara) 

Tiwi Museum

From an exhibition in the Patakijiyali Museum

Sister Anne Gardiner has done amazing job keeping up the Patakijiyali Museum, with a focus on language and culture, including the sale of Tiwi language books and exhibitions incorporating Tiwi language. Sr Anne has been a long time advocate for Tiwi language and culture over many decades, and has been very helpful to the Living Archive project since it started.

I brought back more Tiwi language books to be scanned and uploaded to our archive, and with the signatures we managed to get I can release more books to public view on the website. We also found a video and an audio file to upload. We look forward to hearing about the exciting ways this fantastic material is being used in the school and the wider community.

 

ICLDC4

ICLDC4_logoThanks to the Charles Darwin University Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Exceptional Performance in Research, I was fortunate to be able to attend the 4th International Conference on Language Documentation and conservation at the University of Hawai’i Mānoa. 

This was a fantastic opportunity to hear from a wide range of people working in the endangered languages field, with a focus on enriching theory, practice and application. This meant that most presentations had real-world applications, particularly reporting on specific projects or tools, sharing ideas about what works and doesn’t in specific contexts. There were a few sessions directly relating to archiving endangered language materials, and lots of discussion about issues that concern our project, such as ownership and copyright.

I made some good connections with other practitioners, and picked up some nuggets that will help our project. For example my conversation with an SIL representative gave me some useful ideas about how to request changes to the ISO 639-3 codes for Yolngu languages. Hearing from MPI about their process of shifting The Language Archive to a new open source repository solution is helpful to our library staff who are considering future changes along these lines. Another colleague had suggestions about displaying special characters in certain online contexts. I was also challenged to think about the pedagogical affordances of our archive, ie how  accessible and useful the materials are for people learning Indigenous NT languages.

It was good to see so many Indigenous people in attendance, many First Nations people from Canada and the US (particularly Hawai’i and Alaska), many of whom are doing really interesting things with language revitalisation. And the Australian contingent was strong, with an entire morning session dedicated to “Language Pedagogy and Practice in Indigenous Australia” run by the team from the Research Unit for Indigenous Language, and a really challenging presentation about issues in Australian language revitalisation from John Hobson of the University of Sydney.

I was able to demonstrate the Living Archive site at an e-poster session, among a dozen other demonstrations. Here I was able to share with interested people about the work we’re doing, and promote the project to the wider language documentation community. I had a few queries about sharing our open-source infrastructure with other communities, and lots of brochures were distributed.

I got into some ‘live-tweeting’ with a few other tweeters, and even participated in a ‘tweet-up‘ meeting face-to-face with tweeters sharing the hashtag #ICLDC4. One even documented our conference tweeting at https://storify.com/superlinguo/icldc4.

Besides Hawai’i being a fantastic location for a conference, the event itself was incredibly well-organised and worthwhile. I look forward to building on some of the connections I made and developing some ideas to benefit the project.

 

Yolngu language video

Teacher linguist from Milingimbi school, Elizabeth Milmilany (Räkay) shares about the Living Archive project and why it’s important for Yolŋu language and culture.

Watch this video (less than 90 seconds long) to hear her speaking in Gupapuyŋu language (we’ve added English subtitles as well). There are two versions – they’re exactly the same but the first one uses less data (7Mb) and the second one is higher quality so uses more data (22Mb).

 

 

Uploading items

Once books are scanned, there are several different steps to go through before they appear on the Living Archive website.

All the metadata (information about the book, like title, the names of people involved in creating the book, date and place of publication, etc) is stored in a spreadsheet. Once a group of books is scanned, the metadata is double-checked on the spreadsheet, as this is the information that will appear on the website. Some categories have ‘controlled vocabulary‘ which means that the information has to match exactly – so things like place names have to spelt correctly. This can be a challenge for places or languages with different names, so we have created standard names such as Gunbalanya (Oenpelli) or Arrarnta, Western. Also, all creators are assigned a code so that people whose names may appear differently in different books can have all their items grouped together.

Once we’re happy that all the information is correct, and all the files and folders are consistently named, the technical team at CDU Library do a batch upload. This takes all the information from the spreadsheet and the files from the server and uploads them all to the eSpace digital repository. These then have to be checked, because we usually find some issue – sometimes even supposedly minor things like spaces or commas can make a difference (this time it was the shape of the apostrophe in Galiwin’ku!)

Once they’re uploaded, we have to check which items can then be made public, which means they have had permission granted by all the relevant people. These items go into the ‘open’ collection which appears on the Living Archive website, and all the others stay in a ‘closed’ collection, awaiting permissions. Once they’re made public, the books appear immediately on the website, but sometimes the counting of items takes a day to catch up (these things reset overnight).

We also need to link any ‘related items‘, such as translations in other languages or different versions, sometimes audio or multimedia files. Some books have lots of these, such as the Little Frog book which is in 6 different languages! Then all the files and folders are merged into the appropriate collections, on both eSpace and the local server.

The whole process can take quite a while, and it rarely goes completely smoothly. We usually do a few collections at once, so hundreds of items may be uploaded at different points throughout the year. Despite all the quality control processes, we still manage to find errors – if you find any, feel free to let us know so we can fix them!

Honouring Denise Millar

The Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages is honoured to have been chosen as the recipient of donations in lieu of flowers at the funeral of Denise Millar.  Her daughter kindly sent this photo and these words to describe her mother.

Denise_Millar

 

Denise Millar 5.11.46 – 17.12.14

Denise was a lover of art, culture and history. She was also a passionate advocate for Indigenous education. She felt supporting the Living Archive was her way of leaving a legacy that combined all of these things.  

 

We wish to warmly thank those who donated in Denise’s name, and we will shortly be announcing our plans to use the money in a way that honours Denise’s legacy.

Welcome to 2015

The Living Archive project is about to enter its fourth year – not bad for something that was originally funded for 1 year! Careful spending and a second successful funding application has allowed us to continue the project over a longer period, and do so much more than we could have done in a single year.

Some statistics:

At the end of 2014 we had 3115 items uploaded to CDU Library’s eSpace server, of which 1353 are publicly available through the LAAL website. The public items represent only 43% of the total, and one of our goals for this year is to increase that percentage. The main reason for this is the difficulty of identifying and tracking down the creators of each item to get their permission to make the items public. We’ve already collected over 600 signatures, yet there are still nearly 1000 additional names to find. Some items don’t have any information about the creators, so they can’t be made public without someone giving permission, but who do we ask?

  • Number of languages represented: 30
  • Number of communities represented: 27
  • Language with the most items publicly available: Pintupi-Luritja (189 items)
  • Language with the most items uploaded: Warlpiri (517 items)
  • Language with the highest proportion of uploaded items made public: Maung (80%)

More items are being uploaded regularly – some have already gone up this week, and more will follow soon. The process takes a while to ensure that all the information is correctly recorded and uploaded, and we still find errors even after careful checking! If you find an error, feel free to let us know.

Comparison figures for the end of each year so far:

year uploaded public
2012 436 89
2013 1453 645
2014 3115 1353

Looking back at our plans for 2014, it’s nice to see that we achieved most of them. Some of our achievements include:

  • revamping the website to include a more intuitive map page and a separate project site where we can post other information
  • developing a social media presence on Facebook and Twitter an efficient means of sharing information quickly, as well as a record of some of our activities
  • having public ‘launches’ in both Canberra and Darwin which attracted a very positive response
  • adding materials identified through the ‘Search and Rescue‘ strand, particularly through the workshop held at Batchelor Institute in July. There are already 134 items from 3 languages, with more coming soon
  • having our archive added to OLAC and ANDS and accessible through Trove

The to-do list for 2015 looks enormous already, but we’re looking forward to developing the Archive further, with input from our users.

Here are a few things we have planned for this year:

  • our LAAL Reader app to allow mobile users to download whole collections for use offline
  • an API which will allow users to log in to the site and made changes. This will include visiting some communities to test the functionality
  • working out how to make information about items not yet public available to users
  • engaging with the academic community to encourage researchers to use the archive
  • working more closely with remote schools and others to find creative ways to use the materials in the classroom
  • update our language map with feedback from community members and other experts
  • more writing – we had two academic papers published last year, with two more due out soon, and two more currently under review. We have ideas for several more, the challenge is finding the time to write them!
  • more permissions
  • streamlining processes for adding audio files and e-book files to the archive
  • continue to try to update codes for Yolŋu language names in ISO 639-3 to better reflect language naming practices in current use
  • sustainability audit to work out how best to maintain the archive once our funding expires at the end of 2015

Thanks for helping us make this a ‘living archive’ by engaging with us as we develop it, and by using the materials in the archive.