Paradisec
Encyclopedia
The Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (Paradisec) is a cross-institutional project that supports work on endangered languages and cultures of the Pacific and the region around Australia. They digitise reel-to-reel field tapes, have a mass data store and use international standards for metadata description. Paradisec is part of the worldwide community of language archives (Delaman and the Open Language Archives Community). Paradisec's main motivation is to ensure that unique recordings of small languages are themselves preserved for the future, and that researchers consider the future accessibility to their materials from other researchers, community members, or anyone who has an interest in such materials.
- contains some 5.1 terabytes of data in more than 46,860 individual files (correct at January 2011).
The database of archived materials can be freely searched via the Open Languages Archives Community. Direct access to archived recordings however, requires permission as specified by the depositor.
copies of each BWF, for the purpose of access. These too, are archived with the master BWF copies.
, Stephen Wurm
, Clemens Voorhoeve and Terry Crowley
. These recordings may be stored on a variety of formats, but are mainly cassette tapes and reel-to-reel tapes.
Analogue recordings are digitised at the highest possible fidelity to ensure high-quality digital files result. The current international archive standard for PCM audio files is 24-bit resolution and a sample rate of 96 kHz. PARADISEC employs a standard of 24-bit resolution and 96 kHz sample rate to ensure highest practicable fidelity digital copies are produced.
and the Australian National University
, as well as the Australian Research Council and Grangenet. Paradisec's main office and primary ingestion stations are located at the University of Sydney in the Transient Building, and a secondary office, comprising further ingestion stations, is situated at the University of Melbourne. The archive is currently headed by Linda Barwick and Nicholas Thieberger
.
Vanishing Voices
As the number of small languages in the world is reduced by many factors (urbanization, colonial policies, the speakers' desire to learn languages which give access to resources), the tapes which may be their only record become increasingly more valuable. Too many of these recordings are held in poor conditions and are not described in a public catalog. PARADISEC provides the infrastructure to deposit and locate these recordings.Archive
The collection currently contains roughly 3,000 hours of archived audio materials representing more than 630 languages from around 60 countries. This is supplemented by significant amounts of images, videos and text objects. Altogether, the archive - a near-line storage facility housed at the Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing in CanberraCanberra
Canberra is the capital city of Australia. With a population of over 345,000, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The city is located at the northern end of the Australian Capital Territory , south-west of Sydney, and north-east of Melbourne...
- contains some 5.1 terabytes of data in more than 46,860 individual files (correct at January 2011).
The database of archived materials can be freely searched via the Open Languages Archives Community. Direct access to archived recordings however, requires permission as specified by the depositor.
File Types
For the secure archival of audio files complete with metadata headers, PARADISEC uses the Quadriga system, developed by Cube-Tec, which conforms to the BWF specifications of the European Broadcast Union (EBU). BWF files are archived with a digitally sealed 'header' comprising metadata exported from the Paradisec catalog. This sealed header also acts as a security device and prevents the archived BWF from any unauthorised edits, thus preserving the audio signal for posterity. It is also standard practice to produce smaller, more easily transported mp3MP3
MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
copies of each BWF, for the purpose of access. These too, are archived with the master BWF copies.
Digitisation
A large part of the project is the digitisation of valuable analogue recordings of languages and cultures from the Pacific region that will otherwise deteriorate and become unreadable. Researchers whose materials are represented in these collections include Arthur CapellArthur Capell
Arthur Capell was an Australian linguist, who made major contributions to the study of Australian languages, Austronesian languages and Papuan languages.-Life:...
, Stephen Wurm
Stephen Wurm
Stephen Adolphe Wurm was a Hungarian-born Australian linguist.- Biography :Wurm was born in Budapest, the second child to the German-speaking Adolphe Wurm and Hungarian-speaking Anna Novroczky, and was christened Istvan Adolphe Wurm...
, Clemens Voorhoeve and Terry Crowley
Terry Crowley (linguist)
Terry Crowley was a linguist specializing in Oceanic languages as well as Bislama, the English-lexified Creole recognized as a national language in Vanuatu. From 1991 till his death he was a professor at the University of Waikato in New Zealand...
. These recordings may be stored on a variety of formats, but are mainly cassette tapes and reel-to-reel tapes.
Analogue recordings are digitised at the highest possible fidelity to ensure high-quality digital files result. The current international archive standard for PCM audio files is 24-bit resolution and a sample rate of 96 kHz. PARADISEC employs a standard of 24-bit resolution and 96 kHz sample rate to ensure highest practicable fidelity digital copies are produced.
Affiliations
Paradisec is funded by a consortium of four Australian universities, including the Universities of Sydney, Melbourne and New EnglandUniversity of New England, Australia
The University of New England is an Australian public university with approximately 18,000 higher education students. Its original and main campus is located in the city of Armidale in northern New South Wales....
and the Australian National University
Australian National University
The Australian National University is a teaching and research university located in the Australian capital, Canberra.As of 2009, the ANU employs 3,945 administrative staff who teach approximately 10,000 undergraduates, and 7,500 postgraduate students...
, as well as the Australian Research Council and Grangenet. Paradisec's main office and primary ingestion stations are located at the University of Sydney in the Transient Building, and a secondary office, comprising further ingestion stations, is situated at the University of Melbourne. The archive is currently headed by Linda Barwick and Nicholas Thieberger
Nicholas Thieberger
Nicholas Thieberger is an Australian linguist working at the University of Melbourne. He is best known for his research on Indigenous Australian languages, on the South Efate language of Vanuatu, and for his work in Language documentation...
.
Other information
- Paradisec is actively involved in training and supporting language workers and regularly provides recording equipment and advice to researchers and students undertaking fieldwork. They have held a number of field recording and sustainable data workshops and conferences, in the interests of ensuring recordings are made with archival in mind.
- Paradisec is a deductible gift recipient (in Australia) and is seeking sponsorship to digitise endangered ethnographic recordings.