Vanuatu Cultural Centre tape digitisation
| Language | Aneityum, Sie, Raga (Hano), Namakura, Southwest Tanna, North Tanna |
| Depositor | Richard Shing, Nick Thieberger |
| Affiliation | Vanuatu Cultural Centre |
| Location | Vanuatu |
| Collection ID | 0465 |
| Grant ID | LMG0009 |
| Funding Body | ELDP |
| Collection Status | Collection online |
| Landing Page Handle | http://hdl.handle.net/2196/da9cfe78-70b2-4e2c-bb7e-6c6ae799ab05 |
Blog post
ELDP Project Highlight: Vanuatu Cultural Centre tape digitisation
Summary of the collection
This project targets tapes in a number of languages of Vanuatu, made by a range of people over the past 50 years and deposited with the Vanuatu Kaljoral Senta. Very few recordings have been made for most of the 130 languages of Vanuatu, and the VKS collection includes unique records made both by local and visiting researchers. Some recordings came out of the remarkable fieldworker program for which Vanuatu is famous.
Group represented
A range of different language groups are represented.
Special characteristics
This is a collection of analog recordings (open reels and cassettes) held by the Vanuatu Cultural Centre dating back to the early 1960s. We digitised a portion of the 500 or so tapes in the VKS audio archive in Port Vila. The VKS collection is in desperate need of preservation as the tapes have not been played for a long time and need to be auditioned before permissions can be obtained to make them more widely available.
There are 130 languages in Vanuatu, most of which have been little documented. The VKS holds recordings in a number of languages but the collection has been neglected over time. There is no overall catalog that lists all the languages. A recent change of management at the VKS has led to a new focus on preserving these tapes.
PARADISEC has established a working relationship with the VKS and was asked by Ambong Thompson, the director of the audio archive there to assist with digitising their collections.
Collection contents
This collection contains 98 recordings of varying length in seventeen languages from Vanuatu.
Collection history
The target of this project are tapes in a number of languages of Vanuatu, made by a range of people over the past 50 years and deposited with the Vanuatu Kaljoral Senta (VKS). We have excluded any tapes from consideration if we know that originals exist elsewhere, and have identified a number which are unknown outside the VKS. Very few recordings have been made for most of the 130 languages of Vanuatu, and the VKS collection includes unique records made both by local and visiting researchers. Other recordings came out of the remarkable fieldworker program for which Vanuatu is famous. The VKS established a network of volunteer , fieldworkers throughout the country, whose tasks included recording customary knowledge. Some of them also made audio recordings which are held in the VKS building and which are included in our selection of tapes.
Other information
The VKS takes seriously its responsibility to ensure proper protection is provided to speakers recorded in its collection. As the tapes in this collection originate from a range of sources it is not possible to give a blanket access condition for all of them.
The project is run by the VKS which is the national cultural agency for Vanuatu. They will guide the selection of tapes and then decide what can be done with them. Any ethical issues raised by exposing information via digitisation will be be discussed with relevant VKS managers.
PARADISEC uses a takedown principle for any items that are in the current collection but which may subsequently be found to contain embarassing or confidential information and we will apply that same principle to items from the VKS.
Acknowledgement and citation
To refer to any data from the collection, please cite as follows:
Shing, Richard & Nick Thieberger. 2018. Vanuatu Cultural Centre tape digitisation. Endangered Languages Archive. Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/2196/00-0000-0000-0010-798A-5. Accessed on [insert date here].
