Digitisation of North Malaita recordings
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| Language | To’abaita (ISO639-3:mlu), Lau (ISO639-3:llu), Pijin (ISO639-3:pis), , |
| Depositor | Nick Thieberger, Julia Colleen Miller |
| Affiliation | University of Melbourne |
| Location | Solomon Islands |
| Collection ID | 0558 |
| Grant ID | LMG0014 |
| Funding Body | ELDP |
| Collection Status | Collection online |
| Landing Page Handle | http://hdl.handle.net/2196/bd8722ed-d593-4b48-b3f1-f25ece0e4417 |
Summary of the collection
Starting in 1971 and continuing with several field trips after that, Ian Frazer conducted fieldwork in North Malaita, mainly To’abaita but with neighbouring groups as well. During that time he built up a large collection of tapes and photos, along with field notes and other material. There are over 200 cassette tapes and over 40 reel to reel tapes of mixed content – music (traditional and contemporary), traditional stories, history, life histories, extensive enquiries about traditional and present day customs/culture, political history, labour history, and much else.
The bulk of the collection was gathered on three trips 1971-72, 1973-74 and 1975-76, with some additional material in 1985. Most of it was gathered on Malaita but some of it in Honiara where he was also working with the To’abaita.
All the tapes are in their original condition and the earliest ones are very fragile.
There are field notes and lots of associated material including a large amount of material relating to the To’abaita language (dictionaries, grammar, religious texts, etc).
Group represented
Most of the material was gathered in the village of Manakwai; some speakers were living in Honiara at the time.
Language information
To’abaita and Lau are part of the South-eastern subgroup of Austronesian (Oceanic) spoken in the northern region of Malaita Island.
Collection contents
There are over 200 audio cassette tapes and over 40 audio reel to reel tapes of mixed content – music (traditional and contemporary), traditional stories, history, life histories, extensive enquiries about traditional and present day customs/culture, political history, labour history, and much else.
There are also associated field notes collected during the course of this field work.
Acknowledgement and citation
To refer to any data from the collection, please cite as follows:
Frazer, Ian. 2018. North Malaita Field Notes and Recordings. Endangered Languages Archive. Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/2196/00-0000-0000-0012-6E02-F. Accessed on [insert date here].
