Online Language Community Access Program (OLCAP)

Dates: Sept 2007 -

Researcher: Jason Lee

Former Researcher: Patrick McConvell

Sponsor: Maintenance of Indigenous Languages and Records: Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts (MILR: DEWHA external, formerly DCITA)

Institutional Partner: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, The Netherlands (MPI in Nijmegen external)

Current Partners: Victoria River District (NT) language groups; Lockhart River (Qld) language groups

Former Partners: Diwurruwurru-jaru Aboriginal Corporation (Katherine Regional Aboriginal Language Centre); Iwaidja language group.

Abstract

Audio-visual collections in Australia and around the world include significant recordings of Australian Indigenous languages. Older analogue recordings are being digitised but not many have content metadata or annotation added. Newer documentation programs are digital and some have high standards of metadata and annotation. Indigenous languages are nearly all highly endangered and inadequately documented.

Many recordings are in great danger of becoming meaningless to future generations. In Australia, many Indigenous people are assisting to document recordings through their own bodies like Regional Indigenous Language Centres, and using them to create educational materials which will help keep their heritage alive.

In some cases, materials from repositories are simply returned to communities but in the absence of proper archiving or documentation this can be ineffective. In other cases, archives are set up in local communities but the infrastructure and expertise needed to maintain such operations is beyond local capacities. An alternative is to build an on-line central repository which can provide materials to local and regional centres as needed. This is the concept being piloted by OLCAP.

The structure of OLCAP:

Click here to view a diagram of OLCAP structure

OLCAP consists of three parts. These parts are:

The community portal is tightly connected to the server. The third part of OLCAP, creating new language resources, is more loosely connected.

The OLCAP Server

The server is the basis of OLCAP. It is a web server where language recordings are kept. The recordings are protected under a password system. One key feature is that audio and video recordings can be played back over the web with time-aligned transcriptions and translations, similar to the way subtitles work.

Click here to view a diagram of the OLCAP Server

 

The OLCAP Community Portal

Individual community portals have been developed for each specific community. For example, there is a portal for the Lockhart River community of far north Queensland. These portals have been customised for each community and present a more user friendly way to view the content on the server that is specific to that community.

Click here to view a screen grab of the Lockhart River community portal

 

New Language Resources

As part of the OLCAP pilot, new language learning resources have been developed. Some of these resources were developed from older language recordings that have been placed on the OLCAP server. These new resources include posters, books, talking books and videos.

Image of the opening scene of Nungali 'My dog'

 

Current participants

Diagram of OLCAP participants

OLCAP has been running as a pilot from its start in 2007 till 2009. The two main pilot communities have been the Victoria River District in the Northern Territory and Lockhart River in Queensland.

New Participants

From 2009, we have been looking for new OLCAP participants. New participants do not have to engage in all three (server, portal and resource development) parts of OLCAP. The minimum participation consists of placing content on the server. There is currently no direct funding available to new OLCAP teams. However, interested teams are encouraged to seek funding such as that from the MILR (Maintenance of Indigenous Languages and Records) program. Potential new OLCAP teams should have the following features:

Teams interested in participating in OLCAP are asked to contact the OLCAP manager Jason Lee.

Publications

Lee, Jason and McConvell, Patrick. 2007. OLCAP: Online Language Community Access Pilot. Unpublished conference presentation. Click here (pdf 869Kb) to open a PDF copy of the presentation.