The Team Leader is, appropriately, a respected member of the Australian cultural and academic community and, more recently, the Laura regional community. As Deputy Director-General of the National Library of Australia, Professor Wainwright’s innovative approach to the adoption of Internet-based technologies was most ably exemplified by his Chairmanship of the Commonwealth Government’s Information Management Steering Committee. He led the NLA into its cutting-edge developments with metadata in the cultural field. He is a strong advocate for the development of indigenous studies and related research at JCU and considers reconciliation and construction of beneficial relationships between the relevant Indigenous communities and academic researchers in universities, a major objective for this project. He will control financial management of the project.
Dr Cole has conducted archaeological and cultural heritage research in the Laura region since the 1980s, in association with the Laura Indigenous community. This has included extensive site documentation and dating and analysis of rock art and has provided significant data for site conservation and heritage management in the region. Recent collaborative research with Laura Elders and A-GAC includes oral history and ethno-historic documentation to develop a community history and cultural resource for interpretive purposes. Dr Cole, a recent doctoral graduate, is working on the taxonomy for rock art with Victor Steffensen in 2000. She will supervise his graduate research work as part of the proposed project.
With Messrs Andrew and Robert Donald, Liddy Nevile worked for a year (1999-2000) on the development of the Victorian Education Channel. This major project involved many aspects of the process proposed for the Quinkan Matchbox project, including the development of the Victorian Education Metadata Standard. In addition, she has worked on other Aboriginal cultural projects such as the Victorian Aboriginal Education and Culture Group’s school transition project (late 1980s), and the CAUT funded Yolngu Language Project with NTU in the late 1990’s. She was part of the MetaChem research team, and also developed the metadata standards for the Victorian Department of Human Services health channel.
Liddy Nevile has worked on technological innovations since the early 1970’s. Her achievements, particularly in respect to development of smart appropriation of technologies for social advancement are demonstrated by the development of the OZeKIDs series of CD/ROMs that were used to teach Internet skills to online and offline school communities in Australia in the mid-1990s (25,000 CD/ROMs were sold for use on school networks and private computers).
She bridges the two domains in this project and will act as Project Manager, reporting to Professor Wainwright. Melbourne-based, she will be assisted by the co-located Project Administrator.
This person has not yet been identified.
Two masters students, supervised by professor tharam Dillon (Latrobe University), will work with the Project team to investigate requirements, research and work with open source code and relevant standards, prototype design modules and install and test the Quinkan Matchbox. They will work on non-proprietary aspects of the Project and retain intellectual property in their original work.
Robert and Andrew Donald (Motile Pty Ltd) are experienced software developers. Their major roles in projects such as the United Nations Trade Point Development; Maxi Multimedia; the Victorian Government’s Electronic Service Delivery; Australia Post’s Riposte Project; Cinemedia’s Catalogue Management and the Victorian Department of Education, Employment and Training’s Education Channel adequately represent their abilities in the relevant software field.