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Indigenous Digital Collections: An Early

Look at the Organisation and Culture
Interface
a

Martin Nakata , Vicky Nakata , Gabrielle Gardiner , Jill

d

McKeough , Alex Byrne & Jason Gibson

Director, Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning , University of

Technology , Sydney, PO Box 123, Broadway , NSW 2007 E-mail:
b

Researcher, Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning , E-mail:

IT Manager UTS Library , E-mail:

Dean of Law , University of Technology , Sydney E-mail:

University Librarian , University of Technology , Sydney E-mail:

Southern Region Coordinator, Northern Territory Library , GPO Box

42, Darwin NT , 0801 E-mail:
Published online: 08 Jul 2013.

To cite this article: Martin Nakata , Vicky Nakata , Gabrielle Gardiner , Jill McKeough , Alex
Byrne & Jason Gibson (2008) Indigenous Digital Collections: An Early Look at the Organisation
and Culture Interface, Australian Academic & Research Libraries, 39:4, 223-236, DOI:
10.1080/00048623.2008.10721360
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00048623.2008.10721360

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INDIGENOUS DIGITAL COLLECTIONS:

AN EARLY LOOK AT THE
ORGANISATION AND CULTURE
INTERFACE
Martin Nakata, Vicky Nakata,
Gabrielle Gardiner, Jill McKeough,
Alex Byrne and Jason Gibson
This article identifies and provides some commentary
on the key issues emerging from research into the
digitisation of Indigenous materials in collections
conducted in collaboration with three state libraries. It
situates the research project within the broader context
of related activity aimed at addressing the ongoing
challenges of access, preservation and protection
pertaining to Indigenous materials in libraries. It
examines some of the practical issues that institutions
have to engage with to respond to Indigenous needs and
interests in the digitisation process. Some suggestions
for future progress in the area are made.
AARL December 2008 vol 39 no 4 pp 223-236.
Martin Nakata, Director, Jumbunna Indigenous
House of Learning, University of Technology, Sydney,
PO Box 123, Broadway NSW 2007. E-mail: martin.
nakata@uts.edu.au. Vicky Nakata, Researcher,
Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning. E-mail:
victoria.nakata@uts.edu.au. Gabrielle Gardiner, IT
Manager UTS Library. E-mail: gabrielle.gardiner@
uts.edu.au. Jill McKeough, Dean of Law, University
of Technology, Sydney. E-mail: jill.mckeough@uts.
edu.au. Alex Byrne, University Librarian, University
of Technology, Sydney. E-mail: alex.byrne@uts.edu.
au. Jason Gibson, Southern Region Coordinator,
Northern Territory Library, GPO Box 42, Darwin NT
0801. E-mail: Jay.Gibson@nt.gov.au

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Martin Nakata et al

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n 2004, researchers from the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS)

conducted a review of the ATSILIRN (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Libraries and Information Resource Network) Protocols for Libraries,
1
Archives and Information Services. The protocols had been available for a
decade, but no assessment had been made of their usefulness or impact. The
findings were presented in 2005 to the ATSILIRN conference in Canberra. Many
participants in that review expressed, or confirmed, a need for an additional
section to give guidance on the digitisation of Indigenous materials. It was clear
from these comments by professionals, and confirmed by a subsequent exploration
of the issues in a 2005 evaluation of the Northern Territory Librarys model for
2
Library and Knowledge Centres, that digitisation of Indigenous materials posed
some complex issues for organisations. Briefly, for the purposes of this study, these
complexities emerge in the intersections of Indigenous and Western knowledge
management systems and between the expectations of Indigenous communities
and professionals in collecting institutions. They include, for example, the
challenges posed by the need to accommodate different access conditions for
materials that contain sensitive Indigenous knowledge and by the need for
institutions and communities to deal with conflicts around different concepts
of intellectual property associated with Indigenous and Western knowledge
systems. These complexities emerged in addition to the routine challenges being
dealt with in the evolving area of digitisation practice.
The general literature has been growing in the digitisation area, as have national
and international activities that focus on the digitisation of collections for enhanced
access and preservation of high-demand, fragile or rare materials. The literature
generally indicates a concern in the information profession about the need for
3
consistent standards and protocols in digital repositories across institutions
4
and includes discussion of the role of digital libraries and archives, intellectual
5
6
7
8
property and copyright issues, digital rights management, knowledge webs
9
and banks, changing technologies, and more.
Alongside these discussions, there is growing international demand for Indigenous
10
knowledge and, in turn, concern to safeguard and protect this, including in the
11
digital domain, as a vital resource of Indigenous communities. The UN has
12
been active in this area and IFLA, more recently, has taken the issues on board
through a Presidential Committee. At the ATSILIRN conference in Sydney
in 2006 a small workshop was organised with ATSILIRN members and other
colleagues to focus discussion on the emerging concerns, with particular regard
to the digitisation of Indigenous materials in Australia.
While there is some confidence and progress with regards to technical standards
13
for the conversion of materials to digital forms, there is still much uncertainty
when dealing with other fundamentals, such as how to traverse public access and
use of materials in the context of intellectual property and copyright regimes and
how to respond to the needs and concerns that Indigenous people express about
materials that relate to them. Questions in need of answers include:
To what degree do generic practices and processes need to be adapted
to ensure appropriate public use of Indigenous knowledge materials in
digital collections?
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Indigenous Digital Collections

How will institutions deal with materials in ways that safeguard the
interests of Indigenous peoples?
What can be relied upon to inform best practice in this area?
Will accepted practice deal satisfactorily with materials already in
the public domain but which have contested Indigenous intellectual
property interests?
How will works whose copyright holders cannot be located (orphan
works) be dealt with?
What will inform consistent and fair processes when copyright expires
and traditional knowledge information comes into the public domain?
How will diverse or conflicting views within the Indigenous community
be negotiated by institutions?
How can institutions be certain that they are meeting the expectations
of Indigenous communities?
The 2006 National Summit organised by the Collections Council of Australia
to consider a framework for digital collections prioritised the need for consistent
standards and protocols for digital repositories across the collecting sector for
14
similar uncertainties.
The priority for specific standards, practices and protocols for Indigenous
digital collections is, however, still to gain traction in this process. This led the
UTS researchers who undertook the ATSILIRN Protocols review to pursue
a collaborative project with three state institutions: The State Library of New
South Wales, the Northern Territory Library, and the Library of Queensland.
The project aimed to provide a preliminary investigation of the practical issues
being grappled with by institutions when digitising materials generally and when
digitising Indigenous materials in particular. Our key objective was to gather a
variety of institutional experience, with general approaches to digitisation and
the fit within general approaches of Indigenous Australian materials, in order to
highlight the issues and to describe some approaches to dealing with Indigenous
materials in the digitisation process. On-site discussions and interviews were
held with library personnel involved in all stages of the digitisation process, from
policy development, through project scoping, selection of materials, workflow
design and technical processes, ongoing management systems and issues,
and Indigenous community consultation and communication processes. The
personnel interviewed were identified by the institutions, but in all institutions
there was also consultation with Indigenous library staff, including those not
directly involved in the digitisation process but with broader roles in Indigenous
heritage and reference services, client services and community outreach. The
identification by staff of difficult or unresolved issues provided opportunities
for further exploration of these issues to assist the development of protocols
for dealing with them. To this end the project has also drawn from a range
of sources of knowledge/information/practice/expertise to address some of these
challenges.
Beyond this current project, the end goal is best practice guidelines for developing
and managing Australian Indigenous digital collections. Our long-term aim is
to extend the collaboration into another project to focus on the issues across
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Martin Nakata et al

cultural institutions that collect and hold Indigenous materials. A common goal
must be, at the end of the day, to set high-level practices for engagement with
Indigenous materials in all collecting institutions.
Indigenous mateRIALs and digitisation issues in pRACtice

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Digitisation of collections in libraries has been an evolving area of practice.

Early on, the main, and practically necessary, focus was on technical issues and
standards to achieve a consistent format in the digitisation of items. As these
issues have been sorted and become part of established routines, other aspects
of the digitisation process are now receiving attention. One of these is the need
for focussed priorities and efficiencies in the design of workflows at every point
in the digitisation process: from selection, through conversion and on into
systems management of digital collections. The convergence of these demands
on practice with those that relate to Indigenous items and collections generally
adds to the layers that professionals must work through to facilitate access to
Indigenous materials.
Legal and Sensitivity Issues: Indigenous-Western Tensions in Practice
As a general digitisation principle, libraries quite understandably prioritise for
digitisation those items that do not require complex negotiations for permission
to digitise. At the top of copyright criteria are items out of copyright or items for
which institutions own the copyright. While this is logical and practical, it does
not always work in the interest of Indigenous concerns.
Indigenous people now claim the right of ownership and access to their own
15
cultural heritage. They claim recognition for their intellectual effort in the
representations of Indigenous knowledge collected from them, documented by
others (often, in the past, without informed consent) and deposited in collecting
institutions. As well, Indigenous people now seek access to this archive about
them for their own purposes. The engagement of Indigenous people with
collecting institutions has drawn attention to the differences between Western
and Indigenous systems of knowledge management. Indigenous customary rules
for knowledge access can place clan, moiety, age, gender, initiate status, role
and specialisation restrictions on access to certain knowledge. Increasingly, the
original or descendant Indigenous custodians of knowledge held in collections
seek to negotiate the terms of access and use of Indigenous materials through
negotiations over forms of representations, attributions and appropriate use of
some materials. Digitisation of materials increases the likelihood of inappropriate
access to materials that should be restricted from full view to all but particular
users. Set against this, there are many Indigenous materials that are buried
in institutions collections which Indigenous communities wish to access more
easily. Digitisation is an enabling technology that permits virtual repatriation
without institutional relinquishment of heritage materials. Whether the aim is to
restrict or enable access, however, Western copyright terms may be a barrier to
satisfying the contested vested interests in Indigenous materials.

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Indigenous Digital Collections

To meet Indigenous expectations, institutions are under increasing pressure to

assess the intellectual property status of Indigenous materials on criteria wider
than copyright status. Two primary legal/ethical questions are raised and have
to be given consideration: What significance or value does this item or collection
have for members of the Indigenous community? And what Indigenous cultural
and intellectual property rights are vested in an item or collection? These
questions signal a consideration of an Indigenous priority or need ahead of
copyright status. To uphold the Indigenous priority means that professionals are
likely to engage with conflicting terms and conditions attached to the access and
use of materials. When negotiating Indigenous interest with copyright interests,
professionals find themselves moving between a rock and a hard place. If they
ignore the terms and conditions of use to meet Indigenous needs or expectations,
they risk infringement of copyright or of other applicable legislation. If they
provide inappropriate access to Indigenous materials, they risk breaching
Indigenous customary rights or offending Indigenous people by perpetuating
the circulation of sacred, derogatory and racist depictions of Indigenous people.
If they withhold materials because of these issues, access for Indigenous people
to materials that relate to them is severely compromised.
Protocols for handling Indigenous materials help to uphold Indigenous interests
by developing standards for ethical professional practice. However, they do
not provide legal protection for institutions. Nor do they provide any legal
framework for Indigenous Australians who want their cultural and intellectual
property rights protected. So, in legal terms, developing ethical professional
practice in Indigenous-Western intellectual property intersections is currently
about managing a range of risks associated with breaches of both Indigenous
customary and Western intellectual property rights, including moral rights.
Risk management can be considered along a continuum: from total avoidance
of any contest between copyright and Indigenous interests (by withholding
materials from digitisation) to one more open to the risk of breaching both legal
and cultural principles, with the risk to be managed through sets of disclaimers,
warnings, and mechanisms for withdrawal of materials that interested parties
do contest. The other end of the continuum business as usual and complete
disregard for Indigenous interests is, fortunately, not endorsed by the library
profession.
Institutions had different approaches to risk management. One has been riskaverse but committed to getting appropriate and workable processes in place
for managing Indigenous permissions before providing public access. This
has included the development of institution-specific protocols in tandem with
principles of the ATSILIRN Protocols. The current project, now underway, is
to step policy and protocols down into workable processes for gaining cultural
clearances to facilitate the digitisation of Indigenous materials. This work has
delayed digitisation of Indigenous materials in the interests of maintaining good
relationships with the Indigenous community.

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The other two institutions in this study have been more open to risk but employ
a range of strategies to manage and minimise risks. These include a range of
consultation measures and take-down policies, notably:

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gaining verbal permission where possible if written permission is too

difficult;
notifying Indigenous individuals, families, communities;
acknowledging permissions on the webpage;
where the copyright holders or cultural custodians cannot be found,
acknowledging copyright or cultural interests on the webpage and
asking for people with information to come forward;
using Indigenous professionals, community contacts and researchers
for guidance;
inviting Indigenous people in to view digitised exhibitions and
responding to any concerns raised; and
employing an Indigenous liaison person to encourage interaction
between the collection management or heritage sections and Indigenous
people.
These strategies were used for determining legal and culturally sensitive
judgements and for maintaining good relationships. Though effective, some
shortcomings were acknowledged. These mostly centred on a lack of formal
documentation, including the lack of detail of the various elements required for
a clear process for managing risk. Documentation of these strategies and their
inclusion in a broader risk management process were recognised as necessary to
build consistent practice and to meet due diligence requirements. It was clear to
us that practical guidelines are needed here.
Whatever the approach to risk that is taken by institutions, the questions to be
considered in any practical guidelines are:
What processes will promote the most enhanced public access for the
minimum of risk of legal infringement?
What processes will be acceptable for the Indigenous community? and
What processes will meet due diligence requirements for institutions
in this shared space of legal and cultural interpretation?
Two positions need highlighting when determining a course of action: Whose
interests are at stake, and what is the risk being managed?
It may be useful for the profession if guidelines were to include a table to sort out
the issues and to explore approaches to manoeuvre around the copyright issues
in order to ensure Indigenous interests are upheld. This may help provide the
sort of framework organisations could use to determine approaches in a range
of cases.
So, for example, we can take a practice such as avoidance of orphan works,
or a problem such as item is significant but cultural custodians cannot be
determined, or a question about derivative works, and present briefly what
that means from an Indigenous perspective, the professional perspective, and
offer some best practice approaches to resolving the issues.
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We think it useful to then state what level of legal and cultural protection is being
afforded via any approach. It has to be conceded that resolution is likely to be
quite imperfect. In this case, both Indigenous stakeholders and institutions need
to understand the risks and weigh up each others level of risk. It is also critical
to understand what particular approaches mean for the digitisation process.
What does it mean for the technical conversion of materials and the ongoing
management of them in repositories or online? And therefore what information
has to be captured? And when, and by what means, and where in the process
does this information have to be captured and recorded?
In addition, the implications for managing complaints about infringements have
to be built into any risk management approach. Questions for the process might
include:
What has to be documented?
What has to have formal agreement or broad agreement?
What information has to be gathered about what is high risk material
likely to offend or attract litigation?
What information has to be publicly displayed? and
What process has to be demonstrated and transparent to reduce legal
risks and so on?
This is a way of instituting exceptions for Indigenous materials in the absence of,
or ahead of, any appropriate legal provision in legislation.
We think that setting this out as a practical guide should also help dialogue
between Indigenous and institutional stakeholders because it clarifies the
positions of both, and situates the compromise in a way that promotes better
understanding of all that is at stake. This space must be mutually intelligible and
a common language needs to develop. So consistency is useful in this regard as
well.
To encourage development of such an approach and to guide practice in this area,
some professionals drew attention to the need for some supporting materials,
perhaps by way of information sheets. These might well include:
Broad principles for due diligence for orphan works containing
Indigenous materials;
Ways to deal with in-perpetuity copyright when it inhibits Indigenous
access;
Creative Commons and non-exclusive rights issues and approaches for
Indigenous materials;
Constructing a take-down policy that works as a process;
Examples of statements and disclaimers for various things;
Examples of the sorts of information that need to be gathered at the
point of acquisition or deposit of Indigenous materials, or at the initial
selection point;
Examples of what information to include in headers and footers of
digital files, and the benefits of working towards that as best practice;
Examples of what and how to include the existence of some items for
searching purposes but not for viewing online;
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Martin Nakata et al

Lists of what not to digitise; and

Summaries of the issues in Indigenous-Western knowledge management
intersections that explain the Indigenous perspective; for example,
Indigenous notions of in-perpetuity collective rights that adhere to
inter-generational transmission of the oral knowledge tradition.

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An Indigenous professional in our project argued that there needs to be some

attempt at institution level to resolve the ownership questions more broadly. This
requires acceptance by the profession that digitisation of Indigenous materials,
as a matter of course, involves dealing with contested access and use issues.
ImpLICAtions for the Digitisation Process
Although differentiated practice is seen by the profession to pivot on the legal and
sensitivity issues, our conversations in the three institutions also drew attention
to the challenges associated with incorporating these requirements into the
overall digitisation process. That is, the thorn in the side of established practice
is not just the onerous burden of gaining permissions and clearances to satisfy
legal compliance and Indigenous interests. Attending to the legal and cultural
sensitivities issues has an impact on all aspects of the decision-making process:
selection;
copyright and Indigenous clearances;
decisions about what has to be captured in cataloguing and metadata
for accurate descriptions, for enhanced access, use and reproductions
that also protect Indigenous interests, and for ongoing management
and administration; and
what it means for time and costs.
This is the case for all materials, but, because there are different and sometimes
conflicting interests with regard to Indigenous materials, a careful approach is
required to layer in Indigenous issues.
So professionals have to sort out, early in the digitisation process, the flags, prompts
or pop-ups that identify Indigenous materials which then direct professionals
to supplementary information or checklists that ensure appropriate practice
is followed. These flags and pop-ups need to be inserted in, or related to, the
standard forms, processes and workflow design of the decision-making sequence
so that a routine approach to Indigenous materials can be streamlined within
the overall digitisation process. This has to be done in a way that protects legal
and Indigenous interests, which implies there has to be enough documentation
of process to demonstrate due diligence in relation to risks.
For example, at the selection point for digitisation, a pop-up in generic selection
criteria should ask the question: Does the item under consideration hold
significance or value for an Indigenous group or community or contain Indigenous
knowledge? This should refer professionals to a list of further considerations or
checks which prioritise Indigenous interests:
Does this item/collection fit within Indigenous priorities identified in
digitisation or collection development policies?
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Indigenous Digital Collections

Does this item/collection contain Indigenous cultural and intellectual

property interests?
Is there information attached to this item/collection?
Does this item/collection require consultation with Indigenous
professionals, community members, others?
Does the significance of this item/collection to an Indigenous group
warrant extra time and costs in gaining permissions and managing
access and use?
Does the item/collection lend itself to digital repatriation to the source
community?
This would turn professionals back to look up a deposit form or, where there is no
deposit form, to an additional process for gathering and recording the information
required. Information gathering is important given that much Indigenous
material is in heritage collections which may or may not be catalogued, and may
or may not have an electronic record. In turn, that information would signal the
need for further enhanced forms along the process, for example, in the copyright
criteria or copyright clearance checklist, or in the short and long records for
cataloguing and metadata, including for web accessibility.
So, whether we are collecting information at the deposit stage (the process for
contemporary acquisitions) or whether we need to generate this information for
materials already in collections, before a final selection decision can be made
another checklist is required that sets out what sort of information is required
about future access and use conditions, including digital access:
Who holds copyright?
Who is the relevant cultural reference point, including inter-generational
reference points, for Indigenous customary rights?
Other information for identification and description of the materials
so metadata can be developed to ensure appropriate access and risk
management.
It is current practice in the institutions we visited to collect information at
the time of acquisition and deposit, but some exemplars of best practice with
regard to Indigenous materials would still be useful to enhance the information
gathering process.
However this is approached, the management strategy must first be to indicate
information capture, by establishing:
What information should be captured at the point of deposit or at the
point of initial selection for digitisation?
What should be reflected in the short/long record and in the technical
conversion process, for example?
What needs to be attached to the digital file?
What needs to be reflected on web pages, or on downloads and printouts and so on?
Secondly, the management strategy must also identify where more micro-sets of
processes are needed along the digitisation process. For example:
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Martin Nakata et al

What is the process for permissions clearances?

Who is first point of contact?
Who is involved in final decision making in relation to an item?
Are there different processes for different formats?
What are high-risk areas to be avoided?
What aspects of the process need to be formally documented, recorded,
or publicly displayed to constitute due diligence?

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Institutions that were managing risk identified another example where the microprocess needs to be clear. It is easy to take down materials and name that as a
risk-management practice. But it requires more work to build consistent practice
that will also contribute to a due diligence approach. For example, what is the
process to be followed for take down of materials should there be complaints? A
number of issues were raised about this:
Are they to disappear altogether, or would the Indigenous community
and the integrity of collections be better served by blocking out and
inserting an appropriate message, as, for example, AIATSIS (Australian
Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies) does?
What if the item is still publicly accessible in other places, such as on
Picture Australia, for example?
What process should follow any take down to assess if items should
stay down, or if the request was unreasonable?
How is the time frame for putting back up materials associated with
sorry business to be managed?
What do all these issues mean for the technical conversion stage?
Whether institutions were risk-averse or risk managers, they had all identified
the need for clearly-identified processes to manage issues relating to Indigenous
materials. The difference among the institutions related to whether they were
tidying up these loose ends before or after the fact of digitisation and upload for
public access.
So, it is clear that any future digitisation guidelines for Indigenous materials need
to attend to the issue of where points of differentiated practice have to be flagged
in the workflow design and to the sort of information to be captured at these
points to facilitate best practice.
Prioritising Indigenous MateRIALs
As noted already, legal and cultural sensitivity issues affect the selection process
because they help determine what can be digitised and what cannot. This is
a challenge for Indigenous priorities, because dealing with the intellectual
property issues incurs more than risk. It incurs additional time and costs and can
mean circumventing materials which might be significant to Indigenous people
or might build useful Indigenous collections.
Different institutions organise selection criteria according to their collections
and locations, but they have in common the consideration of the following:

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the content in terms of significance, intellectual value, and

uniqueness;
copyright issues;
user demand for items/collections;
the physical condition and format of materials;
the availability of adequate descriptive information; and
cost.
If the main focus of any planned digitisation activity, whether it be for an exhibition,
of a particular collection, or of images, is on Indigenous materials only, then, in
our view, generic criteria are acceptable because the decision to select according
to an Indigenous priority has already occurred. Selection is focussed on choices
among different Indigenous materials. Throughout the weighing-up process,
selection is assumed to consider and support Indigenous needs, expectations, and
interests according to priorities set out in policy. But digitisation of Indigenous
materials also occurs when it is incidental to a larger project or a proportion
of overall digitisation targets. This highlights wider selection and prioritisation
questions relating to the basis on which Indigenous digitisation is considered
amongst all the other competing priorities for digitisation.
Is it on a comparative basis with the broader Australian population?
Is it determined by an investigation of what is contained within
collections?
Is it determined on grounds of general historical interest?
Does it come up for consideration incidentally when other collections
of general heritage interest contain Indigenous materials?
Does it default to a collection development policy?
Are Indigenous priorities set out in digitisation policy?
The point here is an important one from the Indigenous perspective.
Although the funding constraints in collecting institutions have to be
acknowledged, Indigenous people do not, on the whole, accept the percentage
16
of population argument. Nor does the rationale that places Indigenous
Australians as another ethnic group in the vast multicultural mix that is now
Australian society gain much support in Indigenous circles. From the Indigenous
perspective, Indigenous Australians are the first peoples, the original inhabitants.
This uniqueness should not be bundled in with ethnic compositions. Almost
everything that supported traditional social structures for tens of thousands of
years has been turned upside down by colonial intervention and, as a result,
many Indigenous communities remain in social, economic and emotional crisis.
If the pattern of prioritising the needs of Indigenous Australians as if they were
just one of many ethnic groups in Australia continues, then one clear fact of this
approach must be owned up to institutions still dont know the extent of what
is held on Indigenous people in cultural collections around the country. Business
as usual has proved this approach does not work.
Indigenous interest in the digitisation of Indigenous materials is not just based
on a nostalgic yearning for the past, nor is it based on arguments about national
significance. Digitisation is a practical means for reconnection with knowledge
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Martin Nakata et al

and information produced about Indigenous groups, collected from them and
now dispersed through cultural collections across the country. This is knowledge
and information Indigenous people want to access for future utility, for creative
endeavours and, importantly, for emotional and spiritual restoration of a
people.
Indigenous Priorities and Digitisation Policy

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If the digitisation schedules in libraries are going to reflect some priority for
materials that are significant to Indigenous communities and people, then
something needs to be said about the connections between policy and priorities
for digitisation and how these inform selection and decision making in the
preliminary stage of the digitisation process. However, this does not necessarily
mean developing separate policy and guidelines in the area. That approach
creates an unnecessary duplication of work, and we doubt that it helps in the
day-to-day practice of busy professionals.
We consider it more efficient, and more encouraging for inclusion of Indigenous
issues as core business, if primary policy positions include specific reference to
Indigenous materials within them. This already occurs at some levels, for example,
in collection development policy in the institutions we visited. Indeed, institutions
articulated Indigenous collection development priorities very clearly and quite
comprehensively in general policy. It would be strategic, however, to extend this
to digitisation policy areas and to best practice digitisation guidelines.
Some Concluding Remarks
There are some key critical points which future institutional activity needs to
address. Firstly, from the institutions perspective, the legal and sensitivity issues
are reported to be the major point of disjuncture from standard digitisation
processes. These issues are central to Indigenous people as well, in order to ensure
appropriate preparation, handling and management of materials. However, they
can also work to reduce the selection of Indigenous materials, and, therefore, the
value of Indigenous digital collections for Indigenous people. The immediate task
is to focus on resolving some of these issues through the development of guides
and procedures in the next project and to test them over a period of time in a
greater number of cultural organisations to inform sustainable configurations for
Indigenous virtual repositories.
Secondly, the Indigenous preference, without a shadow of doubt, would be to
begin at a different primary point for selection that is, the need for Indigenous
access and use of Indigenous materials in collections. This underlines the urgent
need to identify Indigenous materials in collections. While we can say this
objective is assumed by institutions, and while it is the case that this informs all
that they do, progress towards this goal is patchy. So, as practice moves forward,
it is all-important that the broader goal of Indigenous access to materials held in
collecting institutions is not submerged in the process of working out the microissues of managing the digitisation process.
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Indigenous Digital Collections

Finally, it is important to ensure that digitisation of Indigenous materials

progresses as a higher priority despite legal and cultural sensitivity challenges.
One way to ensure this is to place emphasis on the digitisation of Indigenous
materials for preservation. The grounds for prioritisation would be that
Indigenous materials constitute the documentary heritage of the first peoples
of Australia and, therefore, hold unique significance both for the nation and for
Indigenous Australians. As such, they form an important basis for the ongoing
Australian narrative. These materials need to be preserved for future access and
preservation in digital form. Beginning from this premise means that materials
can be identified and made domain-ready in preparation for another layer of
decision making around the terms, conditions and technologies for access. In
this way we can also build the rationale for a national approach, which can be
supported by the federal government, to accommodate the networked approach
necessary to connect Indigenous peoples and communities to their materials
now scattered across institutions.
Acknowledgement
The authors would like to acknowledge and express appreciation for the
assistance given to them by the management and staff of the State Library New
South Wales, State Library of Queensland and the Northern Territory Library.
notes
1.

A Byrne, A Garwood, H Moorcroft & A Barnes Aboriginal and Torres

Strait Islander Protocols for Libraries, Archives and Information Services
Canberra ALIA 1995; M Nakata, A Byrne, G Gardiner, V Nakata Mapping
the Impact of the 1995 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Protocols for
Libraries, Archives and Information Services unpublished report Sydney
UTS 2005.

2.

M Nakata, V Nakata, J Anderson, V Hart, J Hunter, S Smallacombe, C

Richmond, B Lloyd & G Maynard Evaluation of the Northern Territory
Librarys Libraries and Knowledge Centres Model Darwin Northern
Territory Library 2006 at http://www.ntl.nt.gov.au/_data/assets/pdf_
file/0018/4680/nakata_finalreport.pdf

3.

Declaration of Principles from the World Summit on the Information

Society, Building the Information Society: A Global Challenge in the New
Millennium UN Document WSIS-03/Geneva/Doc/4-E, 12 December 2003
at http://www.itu.int/wsis/docs/geneva/official/dop.html

4.

For example, P Brophy Digital Library Research: Final Report London

Library and Information Commission 1999; G Chowdhury & S
Chowdhury Digital Library Research: Major Issues and Trends Journal of
Documentation 1999 vol 55 no 4 pp409448.

5.

R Sullivan Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property Rights: A Digital

Context D-Lib Magazine 2002 vol 8 no 5 pp1-6.

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December 2008

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Martin Nakata et al

6.

E Hudson & A Kenyon Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Short Guidelines

for Digitisation Melbourne IPRIA 2005.

7.

For example WIPO Copyright Treaty 1996 at http://www.wipo.int/

documents/en/diplconf/distrib/94dc.htm and US Digital Millennium
Copyright Act 1998 at http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.
cgi?dbname=105_cong_bills&docid=f:h2281enr.txt.pdf

8.

For example The Knowledge Web 2004, UK Museums, Libraries & Archives
at http://www.mla.gov.uk/resources/assets//I/iik_kw_pdf_5292.pdf

9.

For example, Knowledge Bank: A Knowledge Sharing Resource for

Victorians in Education at http://www.sofweb.vic.edu.au/knowledgebank/

10. For example, M Nakata Indigenous Knowledge and the Cultural Interface:
Underlying Issues at the Intersection of Knowledge and Information
Systems IFLA Journal 2002 vol 28 no 5/6 pp281-291.
11. For example, J Anderson Indigenous Knowledge and Intellectual Property:
Access, Ownership and Control of Cultural Materials Unpublished Part
A-Research Report to AIATSIS 31 March 2006; J Anderson Access and
Control of Indigenous Knowledge in Libraries and Archives: Ownership and
Future Use Paper presented for the American Library Association and the
MacArthur Foundation, New York Columbia University 2006; E Hudson,
Cultural Institutions, Law and Indigenous Knowledge: A Legal Primer on
the Management of Australian Indigenous Collections Melbourne IPRIA
2006; T Janke Our Culture Our Future: Report on Australian Indigenous
Cultural and Intellectual Property Rights Surrey Hills Michael Frankel &
Co 1998; D Mellor and T Janke Valuing Art Respecting Culture Sydney
National Association for the Visual Arts Ltd 2001.
12. See annex to WIPOGRTKF/IC/9/5 Revised Provisions for the Protection
of Traditional Knowledge: Policy Objectives and Core Principles 2006 at
http://www.wipo.int/edocs/mdocs/tk/en/wipo_grtkf_ic_9/wipo_grtkf_ic_9_
5.doc; J Anderson Framework for Community Protocol Canberra AIATSIS
2006.
13. Liauw Toong Tjiek Desa Informasi: The Role of Digital Libraries in the
Preservation and Dissemination of Indigenous Knowledge The International
Information and Library Review 2006 vol 38 pp123-131.
14. Collections Council of Australia Summit 2006 Digital Collections at http://
www.collectionscouncil.com.au/summit+2006+-+digital+collections.aspx
15. M Nakata & M Langton (eds) Australian Indigenous Knowledge and
Libraries Canberra Australian Academic & Research Libraries 2005.
16. See Australian Indigenous Digital Collections: First Generation Issues 2008
at http://hdl.handle.net/2100/631

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