What is Miromaa?
From the Miromaa website: Miromaa is a program which we [Arwarbukarl Cultural Resource Association, Inc. (ACRA)] have developed to aid in language preservation, reclamation and dissemination work, it is a easy to use, user friendly database to help you gather, organise, analyse and produce outcomes for your language work. The program enforces good archive practise and helps you gather any and all evidences of language including, text, audio, images and video. You can also use it to store your digitised documents for example pdf and Word documents, Excel spreadsheets plus more. It has a secure environment which can only be accessed by username and password, it can help you work on multiple languages or dialects and it also has a learning area where you can begin learning immediately.
The program can run on either a stand-alone desktop or on a network and you are not just limited to using Miromaa only as the program has the ability to import and export its data in various forms including SIL Shoebox/Toolbox text file format, Lexique Pro text file format, Microsoft Word, tables and more. It also comes with heaps of support, just ask or visit our Learning Centre.
Download an informational brochure (PDF)
Introduction to Miromaa
The video below is a 15 minute introduction to Miromaa 3. There are several more instructional videos available on the Miromaa YouTube channel.
About the Organization
From the Arwarbukarl website: Arwarbukarl Cultural Resource Association, Inc. (ACRA) is based in Newcastle, NSW, Australia. We are an Aboriginal not for profit organisation working in the field of Indigenous Language Maintenance. We have been helping to reclaim the Awabakal language of where we live and we also have developed specific computer software to aid us in this activity. We have found it extremely difficult to find user friendly computer software that is specific to language work, everything that we have come across has been aimed at the linguists and academics so this is where we decided to develop our own, its called Miromaa and you can read all about it here. Hence the name of this website, in the Awabakal language Miromaa means “saved”.
Over the past years we have also found that there is no specific websites, training or support networks for Indigenous Language Workers in how we can better use Technology in our endeavours, as such we are also doing what ever we can at National level to aid others in harnessing the power of technology to help. We have made Miromaa available for other Language Centres to use, we have held Language/Technology training classes around the country, so far we have held these in Queensland and Victoria and now we are planning on holding these in Newcastle. We also recently held the first ever Puliima National Indigenous Languages and Information Communication Technology Forum in April this year (2007) in Newcastle [note: the most recent forum was held in 2011 – read more], we feel that this was a great success and hope it provides the drive needed for others to start adapting to technology and how it can place an ever increasing part in language maintenance. From what we have gathered everyone is switching on.
