Wake up CALL!

The CALL Collection is an archive of Indigenous language material, collected over the past 40 years at Batchelor Institute. It began as part of the Institutes’ Centre for Australian Languages and Linguistics (CALL) and is managed jointly with the Library.

This paper discusses the history of the collection and how the material was deposited by students and staff in trust for preservation and safekeeping. Unlike regional or community language centres, the CALL Collection comprises languages from across Australia, a body of work that has survived in the face of colonisation and through the vagaries of changing policies.

The presentation will describe a number of strands currently working towards the goals of access and preservation; a Community Heritage Grant will enable a preservation needs assessment to be professionally carried out, a new database and web interface is under development and staff are working on digitisation. Policies and procedures have been developed to work on the collection using the standards developed by the Indigenous Remote Communications Association. Of particular interest is the work undertaken to develop a permissions strategy that encompasses Western law and First Nations protocols. The recognition and protection of Indigenous intellectual property rights is integral to all the work in the CALL Collection.