Project significance and expected outcomes

Project outcomes

Technologically, the project will:

• Develop a ready-to-use, integrated, multimedia cataloguing, maintenance and search facility;
• Document the process of developing taxonomies, thesauri and catalogue records, and
• Develop suitable security and discovery/filter applications within Matchbox to make it suitable for cultural resources that need to have access restricted dynamically.
• Produce prototype, inter-operable QDC metadata expressed in compliant, W3C recommended, Resource Description Framework (RDF) format;
• Re-conceptualise the traditional model of cataloguing, maintenance and searching established by subject gateways in the 1990’s to provide a rich cultural catalogue and collection process;

With respect to Indigenous Quinkan culture, the Project will:

• Develop a Qualified Dublin Core (QDC) compliant schema for indigenous cultural resources;
• Develop a cultural data management system customised for Quinkan culture;
• Recognise different cultural perspectives and different knowledge systems;
• Enable distributed Elders and custodians to classify and discover their cultural resources on Internet;
• Investigate new practices and formats for recording cultural knowledge;
• Provide the Quinkan Trustees with a license to use Matchbox free of charge for cultural purposes, and
• Create the intellectual property in the content of Quinkan Matchbox with ownership by the Quinkan Trustees (or agents).

Significance

For JCU, this project will

• improve staff and student links with Indigenous corporations and communities while
  • hosting, maintaining, and backing-up the Quinkan implementation of Matchbox;
  • providing resource classifications for inclusion in Matchbox;
  • working with custodians to promote the use of the Quinkan Matchbox, in particular for education and tourism, and
• act as a vehicle for JCU Cairns to reclaim its status in regional rock art and cultural research.

Latrobe University staff and students will participate with international researchers in a leading edge Project, including work with open source software and standards, creating a new field of expertise in the Department of Computer Science..

Significance to Australia

The project will

• contribute to Australia’s ability to easily adopt the DC standards for resource archival and discovery (already mandatory for government resources in the form of the AGLS);
• provide software and a model for cultural participation by other communities;
• bring leading researchers to Australia to work with interested researchers in Australia;
• build a standards-compliant, RDF-based system, fully integrated into a cataloguing facility at one end, and a search/browse facility at the other. The Victorian Education Channel is a partial model for the proposed deployment of Matchbox. The channel brings into a single entry point, tens of thousands of resources published in thousands of locations by educational sources, both formal and informal. Matchbox will be an in-the-box solution for communities with similar needs but less resources than the Victorian government.
• create standard QDC classifications in RDF. Once catalogued, record interoperability will allow later cataloguers to re-use existing records, modeled on the Australian Bibliographic Network. This will accelerate the advance of discoverability and accessibility, as well as the coverage, of resources. Although shared cataloguing is not yet available to smaller, less wealthy communities, many of these provide access to valued, sometimes web-based, resources. It is imperative that these smaller organisations gain access to the techniques and technologies that make distributed cataloguing and resource discovery possible. Ubiquity and distribution of the process depends upon utility, affordability, participation and standards.
• Matchbox, as a user-friendly package, will rapidly enable the development of user-focused web-based services by organisations or individuals with little technical IT expertise, and
• The Quinkan Matchbox implementation, the research reports, and Matchbox itself will contribute to those who research and help Australia’s Indigenous communities.