Strangers on the Land: Place and Indigenous Multimedia Knowledge Systems

Leggett and Dyson are non-indigenous Australians interested in the potential of designing new media applications that are sensitive to and productive for indigenous peoples. Their research has focussed on development of new media systems that reflect indigenous world-views, particularly with relation to established knowledge-sharing protocols. They demonstrate that there is […]

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People, Place and Community Memory: Creating Digital Heritage Databases in Remote Aboriginal Communities

In this paper I describe the Northern Territory Library’s, Libraries and Knowledge Centres program and examine some of the ways that digital technologies are being used to improve local access to archival materials in remote Australian Aboriginal communities. The development of community heritage databases gives some communities the opportunity toconstruct […]

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A Different Way of Knowing: Tools and Strategies for Managing Indigenous Knowledge

There is a growing need to preserve indigenous knowledge, as indigenous communities around the world face ongoing threats to the survival of their traditional languages and cultures. Although libraries have not traditionally focused on this area, libraries and information professionals can play an important role in assisting indigenous communities with […]

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ICT4D: Information and Communication Technology for Development

ICT4D provides an authoritative and accessible account of the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in contemporary development practice. It combines theory with practical guidance – including both a conceptual framework for understanding the rapid development of ICT4D, and practitioners’ overviews of the use of ICTs in enterprise, health, […]

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Backward Compatible: Cybertracker fuses ancient knowledge with cutting-edge technology

Excerpt: CyberTracker creator Louis Liebenberg, a South African scientist and author, first came up with the idea in 1996 while tracking with a group of Kalahari Bushmen. Liebenberg realized that he could help save the Bushmen’s rapidly disappearing knowledge if he could find a way to help trackers, who could […]

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Development Matters 2007-2010

Development Matters, a monthly development update from the DHAN Collective that was published between 2007 and 2010, provides readers with a glimpse of the progress made through various programmes and themes of the DHAN Collective throughout India. Each issue features highlights such as voices from the grassroots level, community in […]

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Finding a Voice: Themes and Discussions

NOTE: the Finding a Voice project (2006-08) was a collaboration between Queensland University of Technology, University of Adelaide, Swinburne University, UNESCO and UNDP. This book has a particular audience in mind: it is aimed primarily at program-side policy strategists and decision-makers. We hope that those who are implementing similar projects […]

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Managing Identities and Diversities in the Age of Internet and Virtual Networks

A Case Study of the Global Organization of People of Indian Origin In the current age of the internet and knowledge networking it has become possible for communities to consolidate themselves through virtual networks cutting across geographical borders and reaching out seamlessly to their diasporic identities spread out globally. While […]

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Information Communication Technologies: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications

Information Communication Technologies: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications is the essential reference source created to meet the rapid development of information communication technologies research, compiling scholarly work in the pivotal areas of social adaptation to information technology. This six-volume compendium covers such topics as ad-hoc networks, collaborative environments, e governance, and […]

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The Participatory Web – New Potentials of ICT in Rural Areas

Web 2.0 solutions offer people in rural areas a platform for networking and knowledge exchange. This brochure provides a systematic overview of Web 2.0 experiences made to date in Africa, Asia and Latin America. It serves as a practice-oriented introduction to the theme and discusses both the potentials and the […]

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Digital Dynamics Across Cultures

Introduction (excerpt) Digital Dynamics Across Cultures re-imagines the work of anthropology in the age of digital reproduction, and, by extension, explores the cross-cultural implications of several seeming truisms of the electronic era. While the libertarian impulses and voices fueling the gold rush mentality of Silicon Valley’s dot.com period often insisted […]

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UNDP Resource Kit on Indigenous Peoples’ Issues

This kit focuses on development and indigenous peoples, with emphasis on their full and effective participation in all development processes and the need for a genuine partnership in—and ownership with them—of these processes. It is designed to provide United Nations Country Teams with guidance as to how to engage indigenous […]

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Saving Traditions: The Ngalia people of Western Australia

Excerpt A long running project of the indigenous Ngalia people of Western Australia has adapted a wide variety of technologies in their fight to preserve their traditional knowledge and culture. Back in the 1980s, the indigenous Ngalia people of Western Australia started their own community research project devoted to the […]

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Methodology of Collaborative Cultural Mapping

Or download in Portuguese >> Description: The Amazon conservation Team believes that the most effective way to protect the environement is to strengthen the indigenous peoples’ cultures working in three fundamental bases: map, manage and protecting. This book shows how ACT develops the Collaborative Cultural Mapping by providing capacity-building and […]

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Boundaries and accountabilities in computer-assisted ethnobotany

Designing software alongside ethnobotanists, and Indigenous owners and practitioners of traditional knowledge brings to light a range of issues which expose some of the assumptions underlying both western ethnobotany, and software design. Collaborating over the development of software to facilitate the use of digital objects in knowledge work, issues of […]

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Being Human: Human-Computer Interaction in the year 2020

“The question persists and indeed grows whether the computer will make it easier or harder for human beings to know who they really are, to identify their real problems, to respond more fully to beauty, to place adequate value on life, and to make their world safer than it now […]

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Digitising and handling Indigenous cultural resources in libraries, archives and museums

Abstract Indigenous cultural resources expose long memory trails which extend from understandings of origins to engagement with contemporary challenges. The tangible traces of aeons old intangible experience, they include practical and ceremonial artefacts housed in museums, sites of cultural significance, testimony and stories collected in libraries, and records of experience […]

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UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage YouTube playlists 2008-2012

Note: 2012 playlist added on December 8, 2012 Below are five playlists from UNESCO’s YouTube account. Each playlist includes a selection of Intangible Cultural Heritage videos from around the world. Grab a cup of tea, play hooky, and enjoy! Intangible Cultural Heritage 2012 Intangible Cultural Heritage 2011 Intangible Cultural Heritage […]

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Cultural Imperialism & Pedagogical Possibilities Emerging from Youth Encounters w/ Internet in Africa

Abstract Many academic and popular writers have warned that the internet could be another form of cultural imperialism used by corporate-led western powers to force feed western values and worldviews to the rest of the world, similar to how Western education was imposed on Africa after colonisation. These ongoing arguments […]

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Queensland Stories: community, collections and digital technology at the State Library of Queensland

Abstract In the vast state of Queensland, the ability to create and share stories about people, places, landscapes and ecology using digital technology and the World Wide Web bridges distance and difference. The sharing of stories is the key concept around which the Queensland Stories Program has been built. The […]

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Why to be Wary of “Design for Developing Countries”

I was forwarded a copy of this article a few years ago by a colleague – and just thought of it again recently. Thankfully, I was able to find a link to it from Dr. Donaldson’s Stanford website. Excerpt There are thoughtful debates on “design and development” versus “design for […]

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A Value Sensitive Design Approach to Indigenous Knowledge Management Systems

Indigenous cultures across the planet are disappearing. In 2007, Wade Davis, a Harvard-trained ethnobotanist, presented at the TED conference on the (subject of endangered cultures). He said, “When each of you in this room were born, there were 6,000 languages spoken on the planet . . . and of those […]

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Negotiating Community Resistance

“Esdunèna keh kudoge dahkwandēʼ tedètsʼet. Neni dahtsʼadi netʼē dahkwandē tsʼèn keniden. Dahtsʼadi etʼē dahkwandēʼ. Dahkwandēʼ niʼushdèn shį̀. Dahkwandēʼ tsʼèn keniden. Dahkwandēʼ tsʼèn keniden.” [“To all my children, we are losing our language. You are our future leaders; you must learn our language. It is the root and heart of our […]

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