When Your Data is My Grandparents Singing. Digitisation and Access for Cultural Records, the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC)

Authors

NICK THIEBERGER, University of Melbourne
AMANDA HARRIS, The University of Sydney

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

4-4-2022

Citation

Thieberger, N and Harris, A. 2022. When Your Data is My Grandparents Singing. Digitisation and Access for Cultural Records, the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC). Data Science Journal, 21: 9, pp. 1–7. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/ dsj-2022-009

Comments

Open access.

Abstract

In this paper we discuss the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC), a research repository that explicitly aims to act as a conduit for research outputs to a range of audiences, both within and outside of academia. PARADISEC has been operating for 19 years, and has grown to hold over 390,000 files currently totaling 150 terabytes and representing 1,312 languages, many of them from Papua New Guinea and the Pacific. Our focus is on recordings and transcripts in the many small languages of the world, the songs and stories that are unique cultural expressions. While this research data is created for a particular project, it has huge value beyond academic research as it is typically oral tradition recorded in places where little else has been recorded. There is an increasing focus in academia on reproducible research and research data management, and repositories are the key to successful data management. We discuss the importance for research practice of having discipline-specific repositories. The data in our work is also cultural material that has value to the people recorded and their descendants, it is their grandparents and so we, as outsider researchers, have special responsibilities to treat the materials with respect and to ensure they are accessible to the people we have worked with.