Indigenous Cultural Heritage in a Digital Age
Organisers:
Cressida Fforde – Heritage Consultant (UK) cressidaff@compuserve.com
Graeme Earl – University of Southampton (UK) graeme.earl@soton.ac.uk
Gary Pappin – Willandra Lakes World Heritage Area (Australia) garyjpappin47@hotmail.com
Lyndon Ormond-Parker – University of Melbourne (Australia) ormond_parker@hotmail.com
ABSTRACT
Information Technology (IT) is increasingly used to catalogue cultural heritage, including placing such information online. While it is well known that the museum sector has been switching to digital cataloguing from the early 1990s, there is increasing use of IT by communities outside museums to locate and collate information about their cultural heritage stored in multiple museums and other collecting institutions.
There are now various databases and on-line search engines that are either in existence or in the planning stages. Who are undertaking these projects and why? Where if any, are the intersections between community needs and institutional ones? Where does the actual ‘object’ or ‘heritage” sit in all of this?
Using IT in this manner poses significant challenges, ranging from technology and protocols to managing cultural concerns and intellectual property rights. Whether by museums or communities, this session looks at the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of using digital media as a means of storing, managing, and presenting data about cultural heritage.
I have been involved in developing databases for cultural information management for the past 5 years in Uluru, Vanuatu and currently in the Wet Tropics in QLD.
We have developed cultural protocol securities to protect restricted information based on local protocols. Also the systems that have been developed have been tailored made for the community while using “user friendly interface” based on web technology and GIS.
We are also working with traditional owners in the Wet Tropics in developing Intellectual Property protocols for data collection and protection.
Troy Mallie