Koorie Archiving System (KAS)

The Koorie Archiving System (KAS) Project will create a shared, collaborative archival space to bring together and make accessible records relating to Koorie communities and individuals, including written records, oral testimony, photographs, audio and video recordings from government, community and personal sources.

This rich, multi-layered resource will support knowledge sharing, family link-ups, land claims, and regeneration of culture and communities. Koorie people will be able to add their records and stories and link them to related government records. They will also be able to annotate, interpret, correct, or provide context for information content sourced from official records.

The project will pioneer a model for archival institutions to work in equal partnership with communities to negotiate rights in the records, and to arrange, describe, and interpret them. The project will also pilot separating the ownership and control of the content of the records from the technical tasks of storing and accessing them.

About the project

Background

The Koorie Archiving System (KAS) Project developed out of the "Trust and Technology: building an archival system for Indigenous oral memory" project (T&T Project).

Project aims

KAS has two aims. From a Koorie perspective, the aim is to provide a space where the Koorie community can come together to provide a Koorie perspective on government records about the community. The benefit to the community will be to bring together parts of their fragmented modern history and in the provision of a degree of ownership over the records. From an archival perspective the aim is to allow researchers to be equal partners in arranging, describing, and interpreting records. It will also pilot separating the functions of holding records from providing access to the records. This is a potential model for the future of access to government records.

Research funding (grants, etc)

The Koorie Archiving System (KAS) Project has a total budget of $243,000. The project received a grant of $100,000 from the Collaborative Internet Innovation Fund, managed by the Victoran Department of Industry, Innovation and Regional Development.

Project progress

Project timetable and outcomes

The project commenced in January 2010. It will run for 18 months and will deliver a wiki providing controlled access to the records of a community. It will also deliver a series of evaluations on the barriers to achieving the aims and the strategies used to overcome the barriers.