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The popular expression ‘locked in the archive’ suggests that items are impossible to find and access once they are archived. Benefiting from new technologies, digital language and music archives nowadays provide an increasing number of records online in and about the world’s small languages. Just six of these archives list between them over 31,000 items, representing something like 2,300 languages. We can certainly do better at making records more widely available—especially records from small, marginalised and sometimes isolated communities—but how do we build pathways for re-use? We discuss the practice of the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC) through the rubric provided by the FAIR principles. Building resources for learning and teaching language, history and culture, revitalising local performance traditions or reinforcing social identity through broadcasting are all possible pathways for future re-use of archival material. Ultimately, it is up to community members to decide on what they will do with archival materials once they have access; and it is up to language archives to listen and do our best to keep the pathways open to enable that. Endangered Archives Programme grant 693 (Preservation of Solomon Islands analogue recordings), Australian Research Council LIEF program (2003, 2004, 2006, 2011), ELDP LMG0009 Vanuatu Cultural Centre tape digitisation, ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, ARC Future Fellowship FT140100214, Australian Research Council DP1096897, LP140100806, LP160100743.

This paper reports on collaborative research by a team of linguists, musicologists, elders, educators and young people from the multilingual Indigenous community of Warruwi (South Goulburn Island, Northern Territory, Australia). A key aim of the various projects has been to make recordings available to the community and to equip and empower community members to be involved in the documentation and to control how old and new recordings are used. In this paper, we report on the repatriation of archival recordings of language and song at Warruwi and discuss how the Warruwi community uses these recordings—and more recent recordings by the research team—for maintenance or revitalisation purposes. Different perspectives will be provided by various members of the community. We demonstrate the need for researchers to have ongoing discussions with community members to inform collaborative research and to ensure communities are empowered to have control over recorded materials and determine priorities for ongoing documentation and revitalisation projects. Warruwi Community.Warruwi School. Funding from the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Programme, the Australian Research Council, the University of Sydney, the University of Melbourne, Batchelor Institute, and the Australian Government Indigenous Languages and Arts Program.

In the Central Australian Warlpiri community of Yuendumu, efforts to document and revitalise Warlpiri songs take place in an era where there are fewer contexts for the performance of associated ceremonies, consequently increasing the endangerment of this unique intellectual tradition. This paper outlines recent initiatives providing contexts for Warlpiri people to engage with archived recordings through repatriation based on-country at the Warlpiri Media Archive. We examine the community’s perspectives and responses to legacy recordings made in the 1950s and 1960s, which captured a particular way of singing that has undergone significant change over the last few decades, even though some of the people who were recorded are still alive today. The individuals who have so far engaged with these archived recordings have drawn out unique perspectives on their contents, including insights into language change, shifting musical structures and the markedly different performance contexts in which these songs were once performed. These examples illustrate that repatriation efforts are much more than a simple process of ‘return’ of cultural materials to their communities of origin—re-engagement with legacy recordings influences performance traditions in their contemporary contexts. Australian Research Council LP140100806, LP160100743. Australian Government Indigenous Languages and Arts program.

This paper focuses on some uses of recording technology in the township of Wadeye in Australia’s Northern Territory, resulting from a project focusing on djanba, a genre of public ceremonial song created and performed by Murriny Patha people. Murriny Patha is one of the healthiest Australian languages, with about 2500 speakers, most living in Wadeye and nearby. In recent years, with substantial social change in the community and the deaths of key composers and performers of the traditional ceremonial genres djanba, wangga and lirrga, performances of ceremonial song have markedly declined. In collaboration with the Wadeye Aboriginal Languages Centre (WALC), the Kanamkek Yile Ngala Museum and the Wadeye Library and Knowledge Centre (WLKC), our research team (Allan Marett, Michael Walsh, Joe Blythe, Nick Reid and Lysbeth Ford) recently completed a project to digitise and document all the song recordings held by WALC, and to make them available through an iTunes database in the WLKC. Port Keats (the early name for Wadeye) was originally established in 1932 as a Catholic mission, and the Catholic church and the Catholic school are the two most visible institutions in the community. In the past, live performances of traditional ceremonial music were used as part of church liturgy, but in recent years recorded music has taken over this function, and indeed one of the main uses for the iTunes database has been to provide music for playing at funerals in the church. Family members of the deceased often ask for CD copies of this music as a keepsake. This paper addresses the modalities of production of these recordings, and how the adoption of these new technologies supports various aspects of traditional social organisation while creating new channels for social interaction and displacing old ones. I am particularly interested in the extent to which localised diversity of place and family affiliation is played out in the composition, performance, content and circulation of the songs. Australian Research Council DP0450131, DP1096897

Ever since the Australian Research Council (ARC) recognised “non-traditional research outputs” (NTROs) as valid expressions of research, developing benchmarks to measure the quality of artistic research has been of increasing interest to the Australian higher education sector. Because research quality (as measured through the triennial Excellence in Research Australia exercise) is a driver for block funding to higher education institutions, decisions about the quality of “artistic research” need to be transparent, based on peer review and justifiable to government auditors. With these requirements in mind, in 2014 the University of Sydney adopted University Guidelines for Non- Traditional Research Outputs. Following the framework and terminology developed by the ARC, the Guidelines recognise that: [r]esearch output may consist of any form of publicly available, assessable materials embodying research, whether produced by writing, making, composing, designing, performing, or curating. (The University of Sydney, 2014) Artistic research (“creative work as research”) is placed within a conceptual framework embracing not only standard print research outputs and but also other “non-traditional” outputs of traditional research (scholarly translations, critical editions, technical standards, exhibitions of archaeological or scientific objects, and research reports for external bodies). Complementing the general criteria and principles, the University Guidelines also include specific criteria and output weightings for each type of NTRO. Recognising the inherently unsatisfactory nature of any system of quality metrics, the presentation will discuss issues arising from the development and implementation of the guidelines within the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Australian Research Council

Yawulyu (in Warlpiri and Warumungu) and awelye (in Arandic XE “Arandic” languages) are cognate names for Australian Aboriginal women’s country-based ceremonies in central Australia. Ceremonial performances constitute a collective expression of knowledge surrounding the particular country, lifestyles, and Dreaming stories to which the ceremonies relate. This knowledge is presented in different modalities including song text, rhythm, melody, movement (gesture, dance), ritual designs, ritual objects, and spatial organization and orientation. This chapter discusses various issues and ideas concerning the sustainability of the tradition. It draws on extensive published literature, the authors’ fieldwork in the area over many years, and a series of interviews conducted as part of the Sustainable Futures project. Australian Research Council LP0989243

'Research, Records and Responsibility' explores developments in collaborative archiving practice between archives and the communities they serve and represent, incorporating case studies of historical recordings, visual data and material culture. It brings together the work of Australian and international scholars commemorating ten years of PARADISEC, and reflects on the development of research and language archiving.