A website and digitisation project for collecting and archiving of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander language materials was launched at Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education June 29th 2017. Known as the CALL Collection and jointly managed by Batchelor Institute’s Centre for Australian Languages and Linguistics (CALL) and the Batchelor Library, the archive includes materials that have been collected over the past 40 years by communities, students and staff.
The archive houses texts, audio, video and eBooks about Australia’s First Nations languages. In the past students and visitors could only access the archive through visiting Batchelor Institute’s Library, an hour and fifteen minutes outside of Darwin in the Northern Territory. Now, this new innovative website means people can see works in their language and get copies of their language resources without having to travel to Batchelor.
The aim of the digitisation project is to keep materials safe, allow people to see or use their language resources and house both digital records and digitised versions of print and analogue materials.
The project involves an extensive permission strategy to reach creators, copyright holders, and cultural and community authorities, to find out if they would like their works uploaded on the website. For more information about terms of use, deposits and end user licences, see here.
The CALL Collection digital archive was funded by the Australian Government’s Indigenous Languages and Arts program.
