Prelims

Half Title Page

DATA CURATION AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS DESIGN FROM AUSTRALASIA

Editorial Page

ADVANCES IN LIBRARIANSHIP EDITOR

• Bharat Mehra, The University of Alabama, Series Editor

Advances in Librarianship Editorial Board

• Denise E. Agosto, Drexel University, USA

• Wade Bishop, University of Tennessee Knoxville, USA

• John Buschman, Seton Hall University, USA

• Michelle Caswell, University of California Los Angeles, USA

• Sandra Hughes-Hassell, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA

• Paul T. Jaeger, University of Maryland, USA

• Don Latham, Florida State University, USA

• Jerome Offord, Harvard University, USA

Title Page

ADVANCES IN LIBRARIANSHIP - VOLUME 54

DATA CURATION AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS DESIGN FROM AUSTRALASIA

IMPLICATIONS FOR CATALOGUING OF VERNACULAR KNOWLEDGE IN GALLERIES, LIBRARIES, ARCHIVES, AND MUSEUMS

EDITED BY

JULIE NICHOLS

University of South Australia, Australia

AND

BHARAT MEHRA

University of Alabama, USA

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Emerald Publishing, Floor 5, Northspring, 21-23 Wellington Street, Leeds LS1 4DL.

First edition 2024

Editorial matter and selection © 2024 Julie Nichols and Bharat Mehra.

Individual chapters © 2024 The authors.

Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited.

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No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters’ suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-80455-615-3 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-80455-614-6 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-80455-616-0 (Epub)

ISSN: 0065-2830 (Series)

Contents

List of Figures and Tables

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 10

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Series Editor’s Introduction

I am delighted to take this opportunity and introduce myself as the new Series Editor of Advances in Librarianship since January 2021. In this capacity, I extend the series’ impact via a critical perspective that spotlights social justice and inclusive praxis from the shadows to become an emerging canon at the very core of who we are and what we value as legit in library and information science (LIS) scholarship and practice. This strategic vision requires destabilising of entrenched hegemonies within our privileged ranks and external communities to alleviate intersecting political, economic, social, and cultural anxieties and power imbalances we witness today. As we move towards the quarter-century mark, we also need to effectively document such paradigm shifts in LIS, serving as a foundation of inspiration upon which, together in our multiple identities and diversities, we can proudly contribute to the building of a meaningful society towards a brighter future for our children to inherit.

New stimulating models reimagining the roles of cultural memory institutions (e.g. libraries, museums, archives, schools, etc.) and the field of information are much required to develop symbolic and real infrastructures for moving us forward. We also need to better tell our stories of information activism and community mobilisation in the face of overwhelming challenges to human existence, from forces of neoliberal corporatisation, political ransacking, media irresponsibility, climate change, environmental degradation, and pandemic dis/misinformation, to name a few. What do the contemporary threats of human extinction and cultural decay mean for LIS professionals, be it scholars, researchers, educators, practitioners, students, and others embedded in a variety of information settings? Not only does it require actions in the ‘doing’ of resistance via information to decentre dysfunctional powerbrokers and their oppressions and entitled privileges. However, disseminating a forward-thinking agenda and narrative beyond our internally focussed bastardised institutional bastions is equally important, as we adopt an active stance to promote fairness, justice, equity/equality, change agency, empowerment, community building, and community development.

Advances in Librarianship holds a special place in the hands, hearts, and minds of readers. The book series serves as a key platform to support creative ideas and practices that change and better articulate the vital contributions of libraries and the impact of information on diverse multicultural communities in a global network information society. Moving forward, my aim for the series is to engage our diverse professional communities in critical discourse that enable real transformations to occur. It is important to propel progress in shifting entrenched positionalities in LIS, while making visible content related to the ‘margins’. Decentring canons and practices towards equity of representation, inclusivity, and progressive change will naturally occur. Intersecting social, cultural, political, and economic upheavals in recent times demand an urgent response from the LIS professions in this regard. I am truly honoured and privileged to build on the legacy of Paul T. Jaeger, who served as Series Editor of Advances in Librarianship since 2013. His research helped to mobilise LIS in addressing concerns surrounding equity, diversity, and inclusion more substantially beyond past lip-service, also shaping the focus of the book series. I plan to operationalise new directions for single or multi-authored book-length explorations and edited collections by shifting focus on understudied spaces, invisible populations from the margins, and knowledge domains that have been under-researched or under-published in what we consider as high impactful venues in LIS and beyond. Examples might involve a reflective journey that established, or newly emerging LIS scholars, researchers, practitioners, and students critically reflect, assess, evaluate, and propose solutions or actions to change entrenched practices and systemic imbalanced inequities in different library and information-related settings. It might also involve decolonising LIS publication industries in their biased Euro/Anglo centricities with inclusion of content from geographical diversities around the world.

I am reaching out to our multiple audiences for their support towards these goals in spreading the word for proposals to new volumes in the collection. Let us find our ‘collective voice’ in the LIS professions to make us all uncomfortable as we continue to ‘push the buttons’, thereby, becoming stronger in our quest to further social justice and develop our humanity, human dignity, respect, and potential to the fullest.

Bharat Mehra, PhD

Professor and EBSCO Endowed Chair in Social Justice

School of Library and Information Studies

University of Alabama

USA

About the Contributors

Quenten Agius is an Aboriginal elder of the Ngadjuri and Narungga First Nations people. He is the former chairperson of the Ngadjuri Nation Aboriginal Corporation, named applicant on the Ngadjuri Nation’s Native title application, experienced Aboriginal Heritage and Cultural Consultant, multi-award winning South Australian (SA) Aboriginal Tourism operator including three SA Tourism Hall of Fame awards (Aboriginal Cultural Tours SA), and a multi-award winning filmmaker. He has also been working with the University of South Australia as a Cultural Advisor for four years.

Rebecca Agius is a Ngadjuri woman, mother of three, and a grandmother. She is learning to pass on knowledge to the next generation and forthright of caretakers of the land to keep practising our culture beliefs so the land stays healthy to keep feeding us and we feed the land.

Alice Beale is a Senior Collections Manager at the South Australian Museum [SAM]. As an archaeologist, she brings her expertise in collection management to the museum, the Australian Aboriginal Cultures collection. Before she joined the SAM, she worked as a curator for the Western Australian Museum in the Anthropology and Archaeology section. She received a Bachelor of Archaeology (Honours) from the Flinders University in 2015.

Erik Champion is an Enterprise Fellow and Associate Professor in Architecture at the University of South Australia. He currently holds honorary positions at the Australian National University, the University of Western Australia, and Curtin University, where he was a UNESCO Chair. He researches areas related to virtual heritage, serious games, and digital humanities.

Lynette Crocker is a senior Kaurna Elder who for 30 years has worked to raise awareness in the areas of reconciliation, employment, native title, education, health, and conservation. In 2020/2021, she received the AMaGA National Award and Best in Heritage, Project of Influence award for work on exhibition Tiati Wanganthi Kumangka.

Susannah Emery is a Game & Narrative Designer and Lecturer at the University of South Australia. Her research interests explore the use of games and technology for learning and to promote social change and she has worked as a game/narrative designer on several award-winning and nominated games on personal computer (PC), console, and mobile.

Karl Farrow is the Chief Technical Officer (CTO) at Apeirogon Group, an Australian technology firm focussed on providing software solutions for various industries. With a background in software engineering, he oversees interdisciplinary teams working on research and development projects that apply different technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and blockchain to address business and industry needs.

Deirdre Feeney is a cross-disciplinary artist and Lecturer of Contemporary Art at the University of South Australia. Her research interests include the materiality of image making, media archaeology, and the history of optics. Her practice-led research collaborates across the STEM disciplines, and her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally.

Julia Garnaut is currently Curator – History and Exhibitions for the City of Holdfast Bay. She has a Master’s in Cultural Heritage Management and has worked in roles across archaeology, cultural heritage, and museums. She has worked alongside the Kaurna community for the past five years, supporting them in various pursuits within the local government.

Georg Grossmann is a Senior Lecturer in the Industrial Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research Centre at the University of South Australia. He works on the integration of business processes and complex data structures for systems interoperability. He received a PhD from UniSA in 2008 and was awarded the Ian Davey Research Thesis prize for the most outstanding PhD thesis. His current research interests include integration of service processes, ontology-driven integration, information visualisation, and the management of digital twins.

Mairi Gunn is a Pākehā of Scottish descent and is a Senior Lecturer in Design at Waipapa Taumata Rau, the University of Auckland. She is an award-winning documentary maker, cinematographer, and digital designer, using extended reality (AR/VR) experiences to foreground intercultural relationships and community economies, including “commoning” thinking and practices.

Deanne Hanchant-Nichols is a Ngarrindjeri/Barkindji woman who worked in the Galleries, libraries, archives, museums (GLAM) sector as a Collections Manager, Archivist and General Manager. She now works in the Higher Education sector. Her research interests are repatriation, identity, genealogy, and DNA/genomics and how this relates to identity. Sharing her culture is her passion.

Irene Hancy (Ngāpuhi, Te Hikutū) Whaea (Elder) is a facilitator based in the Hokianga in the Far North of Aotearoa New Zealand. She is guided by Māori concepts and customary practices. Through Kimihia ko wai au (who am I – a search for identity), she helps her people reclaim and appreciate their authentic indigenous Māori world.

Eloise Labaz is a final-year Master of Architecture student and Bachelor of Architectural Design Graduate at the University of South Australia. As a current University of South Australia Creative Academic Unit Board (AUB) Student Representative and previous University of South Australia Vacation Research Scholarship recipient, her four years of studies have been spent exploring a broad spectrum of typologies, ideologies, and skills, igniting a passion in architectural history, heritage, and social justice-orientated design.

Anna Leditschke is a Lecturer in Urban Planning in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Western Sydney (with campuses located on Darug, Dharawal (or Tharawal), Eora and Wiradjuri lands). She has a background in archaeology and cultural heritage management. Her research interests lie in ethics, cultural heritage, urban governance, and statutory planning systems.

Brye Marshall is an Indigenous Archaeologist and Cultural Heritage Consultant. He has over 15 years’ experience in Indigenous community engagement and Indigenous workforce reform. He has five years’ experience in Aboriginal cultural heritage and non-Aboriginal urban environments. He has undertaken site surface analysis, excavation/transport and forensic analysis of skeletal remains, stone tool analysis and classification, rock art documentation and reporting, excavation supervision, ArcGIS, as well as ethno-archaeological surveying.

Bharat Mehra is Professor and EBSCO Endowed Chair in Social Justice in the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama. His research focusses on diversity and social justice in library and information science and community informatics or the use of information and communication technologies to empower minority and underserved populations to make meaningful changes in their everyday lives. Over 25 years, he has applied action research (i.e. collaborative engaged scholarship via information-related actions to achieve social justice outcomes) to further community engagement while partnering with racial/ethnic groups, international diaspora, sexual minorities, rural communities, low-income families, small businesses, and others, to represent their experiences and perspectives in the design of community-based information systems and services. He has developed a national and international reputation as a scholar with >175 peer-reviewed authored/co-authored publications on equity, diversity, inclusion, accessibility, and international (EDIA+I) social justice content (including >65 in refereed journals). He is the Series Editor of Emerald Publishing’s Advances in Librarianship.

Tinesha Miller is a Ngadjuri young woman and mother.

Ann Newchurch is a Kaurna Narungga woman.

Jeffrey Newchurch is a Kaurna Narungga man and respected Elder. He is heavily involved in advocacy for the Kaurna community and has worked extensively with community and government organisations to repatriate Kaurna old people from across the world back to Kaurna Country.

Lynette Newchurch is a Ngadjuri Narungga woman and a Director on the Ngadjuri Nation Aboriginal Corporation Board.

Julie Nichols is Senior Lecturer in Architecture for the Creative Academic Unit at the University of South Australia. She is the Founder of the Vernacular Knowledge Research Group and on the leadership team for the Australian Research Centre of Interactive and Virtual Environments. Her research is interdisciplinary and cross-culturally focussed on architectural anthropological methods to understand vernacular knowledge in the production of cultural heritage, for First Nations Peoples in Australia and Indonesia. Co-design strategies for dissemination, curation, and reconceptualisation of the role of cultural heritage knowledges for First Nations peoples are her current research interests.

Stephen Nova is a researcher, heritage advisor, and artist. He completed his Masters by Research in 2021 while working as a research assistant with the Vernacular Knowledge Research Group at the University of South Australia. His work sits within the interdisciplinary field of digital humanities and creative arts to document and record heritage at risk and their related socio-cultural stories.

Katica Pedisic is an Architect, Artist, and Lecturer at the University of South Australia. Her research explores sites of architectural interest, engaging storytelling possibilities through drawings and digital animations. Her drawings have been exhibited at the Bartlett, UCA, London, and the Royal Danish School of Arts. She has spoken at conferences (Drawing Millions of Plans, KADK), contributed to books (The Artful Plan), and invited public colloquia such as the Parlour salon series and MPavilion’s MTalks (Storey/Story) on enabling diverse voices in architecture and public space. Her architectural work has been published widely and received numerous Australian Institute of Architects awards for design excellence. As an academic, she has won prizes for teaching excellence as an Early Career Academic and was a finalist for the AASA Education Prize for Early Career Academics. Her project Revolutionary Terrains will be exhibited in the Australian Pavilion for the 18th Venice Biennale of Architecture.

Fanke Peng is a Professorial Lead and Enterprise Fellow at the University of South Australia. She is an award-winning educator, designer, and researcher in design-led innovation, co-design for health and well-being, digital fashion communication, and systemic design. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Tania Remana (Ngāpuhi) is an urban Māori educator and learner of 35-year standing. She is an improvisational performer and community-based multimedia artist who fuses natural and upcycled materials.

Robert Rigney is a Ngadjuri person and a Director on the Ngadjuri Nation Aboriginal Corporation Board.

Subook Samridhi is currently enrolled in the Master of Architecture programme at the University of South Australia, following the completion of a Bachelor of Architectural Studies degree. She originally hails from India, and her research interests lie in exploring alternate architectural practices as well as sustainable and regenerative design.

Bonita Sansbury is a Ngadjuri Narungga woman.

Merle Simpson is a Kaurna Elder, currently employed as Senior Kaurna Liaison Officer for Green Adelaide. She has been extensively involved in recent projects to revive Kaurna firestick farming across Kaurna Country and is highly engaged in supporting Kaurna’s environmental and coastal restoration and protection projects.

Harkaran Singh is a software engineering graduate from the University of South Australia. Originally from Punjab, India, he moved to Adelaide in 2019 to pursue a Bachelor’s in Software Engineering (Honours). He is currently working at SwitchDin, a renewable energy software solutions company where he is focussed on developing and delivering the infrastructure for South Australian Power Networks exports programme.

Ben Smith has been involved in numerous small business ventures and startups alongside a 20-year teaching career. After being inspired by his technologically minded colleagues, he returned to the University of South Australia to study Software Engineering and finished his studies in 2022. Ben has been working as a Software Developer for Go1 since mid-2022 and is currently focussed on building scalable and efficient back-end microservices.

Ben Stubbs is a Senior Lecturer in Journalism and Creative Writing at the University of South Australia. He has written five books exploring different facets of creative non-fiction writing, and he is the Special Issues editor of TEXT journal.

Jared Thomas is a Nukunu person from the Southern Flinders Ranges, and his current role is Research Fellow, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Material Culture and Visual Art at the South Australian Museum and the University of South Australia. His professional life has included arts administration, tertiary teaching, writing fiction, and working in film and television production, curation, and research relating to Aboriginal arts practice and representation in various media.

David Weetra is a Ngadjuri person, former Ngadjuri Nation Aboriginal Corporation Board Director. He grew up on Narungga and Kaurna Country. He is a successful artist working in media of painting and carving.

Yali Leanne Windl is a Wiradjuri Dharawal woman, with many familial, cultural, and community ties to ‘Australia’ and internationally. She is working within a university, making changes to ensure inclusivity, safety and the ability to pursue higher education. She is a published Blakademic, who loves writing and teaching others about her culture, their protocols, practices and knowledges. She is an avid weaver, practising continuously in workshops she teaches, and by surrounding herself with aunties from many countries. She is also passionate about speaking and teaching her mother tongue, while also researching and learning multiple Australian Aboriginal Languages, to enable revival and survival of the languages. Her other passions are mentoring the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth, encouraging each to pursue their dreams and be the best they each can be. Social justice means to her preventing deaths in custody, self-determination and self-sovereignty for her people and ensuring her people’s practices can survive for all Millenia. Her work also extends internationally to other First Nations people and their research.

Rui Zhang is a PhD candidate at the University of South Australia. Her PhD topic is Improving Visitors’ Immersive Experience in Online Museum Exhibitions on Australian Contemporary Craft From a Human-Centred Design Perspective. She also has over eight years of experience in academic research and tertiary education in exhibition design.

Acknowledgment of Country

We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands on which we live and work, and where the book was written. We acknowledge the cultural diversity of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and pay respect to Elders past, present and future.

We acknowledge the stories, traditions and living cultures of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples on this land and commit to building a brighter future together.

Warning: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this book may contain images, yarnings, and names of deceased persons.

Editors’ Acknowledgements

Julie’s Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge the role of my Series Editor, Co-Editor and friend Bharat Mehra for this opportunity to work with him, to brainstorm big ideas and organically uncover new insight throughout the journey of this project. This has been a wonderful collaboration across disciplines and a special thanks goes to all the contributing authors, as well as our highly valued peer reviewers.

I want to give Mr Quenten Agius, Ngadjuri Elder and friend, a special mention as he has motivated this investigation for me. In the first instance, my design interest in Aboriginal cultural centres and secondly, invited the conceptual expansion of ‘data’, the significance of its curation for First Nations people, rethinking systems design for the Indigenisation of existing cultural institutions. I am so grateful always for Quenten and his family providing another way of thinking about being in the world and essentially facing the future with optimism.

Jan, Amelie, Xavier, and Sebastian are my motivation to take on challenging projects like this; to find the humour in adversity; and to celebrate all of life’s achievements with them and because of them. They mean the absolute world to me. Finally a huge thank you to Heleen, Dewi, Izziah, Amy, Jen, Poppy, Belinda, Jacqui, Joel, Peter, and Damien for your wonderful support always.

Bharat’s Acknowledgments

I am very grateful to Julie Nichols, Lead Editor and dear friend, for the countless insightful dialogues and meaningful synergies across cyberspace that led us to this life-changing and spiritual collaboration. It is with a deep sorrow of the pain that our Indigenous brothers and sisters and Native people all around the world continue to experience every day, and an awakening consciousness that connected us across so many spheres of existence, with the hope of resistance and action towards progressive change in cultural memory institutions and beyond that might herald a vision of reconciliation, advocacy, human dignity and social justice.

Our sincere gratitude and humble respect to the incredible Indigenous scholars and other voices that are part of this collection, and to the multitudes who continue to raise awareness and attention of the human rights struggles against the ongoing atrocities towards First Nations people and the many dispossessed and dislocated across remote physical and cultural geographies. Our call to action so that we can truly acknowledge and rectify the terrible wrongs that we subject upon Indigenous communities and Our Sacred Earth that we recognize as home.

Poem

Yali Leanne Windl

University of South Australia, Australia

Preface

Kirsten Thorpe

In order to situate my positionality within cultural protocols of research with/for Indigenous communities, it is important that I introduce myself. My family are Worimi people from Port Stephens, New South Wales. My experiences of employment and professional practice provide a significant backdrop to my standpoint in the research. I came to the library and archives field through an Aboriginal cadetship programme in the late 1990s. Although my entry into the archive and information world was accidental and inspired by an interest in history and social justice, I have found my lifework situated in contributing dialogue and engagement on the intersections between Indigenous knowledge and world views and archival studies.

Currently, I am a Senior Researcher at Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research, University of Technology Sydney (UTS). I lead the Indigenous Archives and Data Stewardship Hub, which advocates for Indigenous rights in archives and data and develops research and engagement in relation to refiguring libraries and archives to support the culturally appropriate ownership, management, and ongoing preservation of Indigenous knowledges. My broad interests are grounded in research and engagement with Indigenous protocols and decolonising practices in the library and archive fields and the broader galleries, libraries, archives, and museums [GLAM] sector. I strongly advocate for the ‘right of reply’ to records and capacity building and support for the development of Living Indigenous Archives on Country.

After the release of Bringing Them Home, the report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families (1997), the GLAM sectors became more acutely aware of the importance of access to records for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Access to records and information was vital for understanding the impacts of racist and discriminatory policies that produced state-sanctioned control. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people sought justice and reparations by engaging with the archives.

However, it was my experience working as an archivist to support access that I recognised that the systems and processes were stacked against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Although the calls for greater access were critical, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were engaging in harmful spaces. Fourmile (1989) described the sense of isolation that Indigenous people experience when wanting to access materials in the archives arguing that: “Aboriginal people feel ill-at-ease and self-conscious when entering white institutions which emanate an entirely alien cultural presence” (p. 3).

Having worked in the GLAM sector for over two decades, I now see the urgent need for new approaches to be designed. New frameworks that support Indigenous people’s needs beyond mainstream bureaucratic practices and instead focus on strengthening the support for the spiritual and emotional care of knowledges. Rather than being places of harm, violence, and erasure, these new approaches must increase their support of Indigenous well-being, justice, and healing.

My research seeks to contribute to an agenda of Indigenous-led community-based research that speaks back to traditional practices within GLAM. My doctoral research Unclasping the White Hand: Reclaiming and Refiguring the Archives to Support Indigenous Wellbeing and Sovereignty (Thorpe, 2022), explored Indigenous self-determination and sovereignty over the management of Indigenous knowledges, with a particular focus on engagement with archives. The research identified immediate reforms required to support Indigenous peoples’ archiving needs and outlined a transformative model of Indigenous Living Archives on Country to support Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and doing in the archives and redress from the impacts of colonisation.

In my research and engagement broadly with the GLAM sector, I see a significant desire for people to support practices that dismantle privilege. This book seeks to inspire GLAM workers to reflect on their practices and engage or further cement approaches supporting community self-determination and agency.

GLAM institutions play a critical role in supporting memory keeping and the care and protection of documentary heritage. These cultural and collecting institutions hold significant power in making the stories of society accessible, useable, and understandable for this generation and those to come. Currently, there is a reckoning across the GLAM sector where people are becoming more aware of the dangers of institutions supporting dominant approaches that silence the world views of Indigenous people and other marginalised communities. Without intervention, GLAM practices support dominant historical narratives that present a biased view of history. GLAM institutions then enable opportunities for hegemonic cultures to diminish other cultures through denial and misrepresentation.

I come from a community where my community never stepped into the library and probably still do not today. Because when you think about it, like we probably don’t have any representations of ourselves in there. (Charlotte Moar, in Thorpe, 2022, p. 134)

This reckoning questions how GLAM has and continues to support colonial processes of dispossession and othering. How GLAM privileges dominant histories over others, and how Eurocentric ways of knowing drive the systems and structures of collecting and keeping within GLAM. The chapters in this book encourage a critique of the systems and structures of GLAM and inspire thought on how to conceptualise new approaches and ethical practices.

• How do you engage in ethical practice in GLAM as a response to past practices that failed in this regard?

• How do you manage reforms that are needed retrospectively while also designing futures that dismantle colonial approaches?

• How can Indigenous Living Archives on Country be developed to nurture and support community cultural information flows?

Internationally, Indigenous people and other diverse communities are challenging hegemonic structures of colonial and imperialist power that still exist. This action can be witnessed in calls for the repatriation and return of cultural heritage to local areas and through demands for collections to be managed and curated according to communities’ local protocols. Once silenced, the need for the spiritual and emotional care of collections is now recognised as a critical component of stewardship practices that need to be built into GLAM approaches.

While there is a significant movement of grassroots community efforts to reframe GLAM practices and dynamic projects being led by professionals to dismantle hegemonic process, there needs to be greater attention placed on a research agenda to theorise and conceptualise different ways of knowing within GLAM. In a GLAM context, participatory frameworks are needed to enable voice and agency of communities who have been marginalised and silenced in GLAM collections.

This book responds to this gap by providing a series of chapters on data curation and information systems design and the need to dismantle the authority that prevails in institutional GLAM practices. The range of papers brought together by editors Julie Nichols and colleague Bharat Mehra highlights opportunities for more ethical practices grounded in principles of co-design and social justice to be considered within cataloguing practices.

The book’s four main sections urge new frameworks for supporting data curation of cultural heritage materials by drawing specifically on research and practice being undertaken in Australasia. These approaches to curation encourage alternative cataloguing methods that seek to empower and awaken Indigenous voices. This activation ranges from examples of projects aiming to embed cultural protocols based on Indigenous practices to altogether abandoning mainstream GLAM processes that do not meet communities’ needs.

Part 1: Infrastructure – explores co-design and social justice opportunities in information systems design, considerations of the ethics and cultural sensitivities of data management, data curation, and games and gamification in GLAM contexts.

Part 2: Bodies of Knowledge – highlights several case studies relating to vernacular knowledge and GLAM. Participatory GLAM models are explored that centre the voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and communities across curatorial practices.

Part 3: Bodies of Experience – has two chapters (amongst others) that focus on First Nations authors’ perspectives. First, through direct and personal yarnings, as transcribed accounts of their experiences, they outline advocacy for reform in the GLAM sector and its management of Ngadjuri Aboriginal cultural heritage materials. Second, one chapter was prepared as an opinion piece from personal experience working in the GLAM sector that is provided by Ngarrindjeri woman, Deanne Hanchant-Nichols. Brye Marshall, Aboriginal archaeologist, proposes a future research methodology for investigating intangible cultural heritage.

Part 4: Representation – shares emerging practice relating to the use of Indigenous knowledges in moving images and using augmented reality. These examples demonstrate how technologies can activate GLAM collections and challenge current normative practices.

Overall, the contributions made in the book chapters encourage new priorities and approaches for data curation across GLAM institutional practice. Through the incorporation of case studies, this book demonstrates new methodological and practical approaches to support the care and maintenance of Indigenous knowledges. Methods of yarning, deep listening, and the embedding of cultural protocols encourage reflection on new transformative practices within GLAM.

GLAM institutions operate in a space that has a history of white supremacy and white privilege. The institutions have traditionally supported elitism, and the processes of colonisation have been embedded in the traditional approaches of GLAM. Significant work must be done to support reforms in GLAM around decolonisation. Without GLAM spaces being decolonised, significant harm will continue to be perpetuated. Similarly, there are great opportunities for GLAM practices to be transformed to support diverse ways of knowing. Embedding care to support the emotional and spiritual care of materials informed by local protocols.

This book sheds new light on approaches that can reduce the harm and dangers of the GLAM sector. Being exposed to stories of practice being generative rather than extractive helps model methods for GLAM to move beyond the status quo. To explore data curation approaches and information systems design beyond normative Western systems, which are damaging and detrimental to Indigenous communities and other marginalised communities.

When we read these examples of partnership approaches outlined in this book, we can imagine GLAM practice that enables appropriate voice, representation, and agency in ways that are currently only at the margins. The field of librarianship and the practice of cataloguing have the potential to respond deeply to the needs of communities beyond the status quo. These approaches should not be viewed as ‘special’ but considered as core requirements for projects to support community well-being.

Reflecting on my research, I see the need for reform and transformation of the archives. The desire for decolonising the archives is a first step in reducing the harms of the current dominant systems and approaches. Decolonising acts and interventions are critical as they will make the archives more welcoming and friendly. These steps in my research are about reframing. However, this reframing and supported reforms must be coupled with a view for a significant transformation of approaches: approaches that are based on Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and doing. The agenda to indigenise GLAM must be distinct from the necessary work required for decolonisation. They are two separate but interrelated agendas.

Currently, the increased focus on the Indigenous data sovereignty movement provides opportunities for Indigenous people to govern their knowledges and cultural heritage materials in ways not conceived before. In entering into these spaces of increased recognition of rights and the need for social justice aligned with better control of data, we must seek to identify and challenge the colonial paradigms perpetuated by GLAM practices. In some cases, they may be able to be refigured or, in some cases, entirely abandoned.

The chapters presented in this book testify to the need for significant transformations, continuing dialogue, and the development of Indigenous-led research agendas in GLAM. My research has identified the need for a new transformative model of Indigenous Living Archives on Country (Thorpe, 2022, p. 240). The Indigenous Living Archives on Country framework is an approach to support Indigenous archival sovereignty. These approaches have implications for current archival practice and theory, proposing pathways for growing archival landscapes embedded with respect for Indigenous world views and cultural knowledge flows. The new models suggest pathways to reframe the archives as an act of rebalancing power, restoring dignity to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and caring for people’s information and archiving needs today and for future generations. McKemmish et al. (2019) also describe a radical reimagining of archives in their description of Living Archive of People and Place in the following ways:

Imagine … if we could bring all records relating to a particular community together in a new, radical form of Living Archive, one that turns the assumptions behind the institutional collecting archival model on their head. What if the dispersed and fragmented archival records relating to an Indigenous community were accessible on and embedded in Country. Instead of visiting a number of institutional archival silos or trolling through numerous web pages to search for often poorly indexed and contextualised records relating to a community, imagine accessing them on Country. And what if the records were not so much read as experienced in the context of other records that have always been connected with that place, including those embodied in the landscape and in the community through reembracing, storytelling, dance, art and artefacts? Imagine an immersive experience of Country as it existed back through time. Walking through Country, ancient landscapes would come to life through layers of storytelling, images and documents, deepening perspectives through extra-sensory interaction. Animated forms that give meaning to a dreaming, creation story or song could be seen to come to life beside, around, or above a rock formation central to their ancestral narrative. A long extinct volcano on the horizon could be witnessed in the throes of an eruption as the visualisation of a distant geological phenomena passed down through Indigenous oral traditions. The more recent past would be similarly revealed through the unlocking of archival material and repatriation to country. Imagine if, through augmented reality, an information board next to the ruins of a nineteenth-century mission was not limited to words and images printed indelibly upon it but acted like a window to the world wide web. Where superimposed images, text, videos and recorded speech emanating from the space of the board would be movable, searchable and navigable.

The authors contributing to this important book extend our understanding of the need for relational and living archives. Futuring our new archival spaces requires a radical reimagining of practice and theory encompassing different ways of knowing, being, and doing in GLAM practice. Views, aligned with a reciprocal archive, are most eloquently described by the late Ally Krebs:

[…] an archive needs to be a yarning, a conversation, with all the tacit protocols involved in a conversation between people, the respect in engagement that allows a conversation to continue over time, to be returned to, to grow and deepen, within a shared creative space. Yarning implicitly acknowledges the various contributors, embraces their contributions. It is by nature co-creative. (Ally Krebs, in Faulkhead & Thorpe, 2017, pp. 4–5)