Introducing digitalpasifik.org

The following project will be of great interest to MEG members. See below for more information about the project and an invitation to get involved. Digital Pasifik write: 

 Invitation to help us make the digitized cultural content of the Pacific easier to find, share, and use by people in and of the Pacific. Through this site, digitalpasifik.org, we intend to bring together the metadata of hundreds of organisations worldwide. By “metadata” we mean the descriptive information about the content, such as the title, URL, description, creator/author. We present your metadata on the site, alongside the metadata of other content partners. You always retain full control over your metadata. We’re looking forward to working with you to help more people discover your Pacific digital content via new and useful tools and services. Please get in touch if you would like to learn more. www.digitalpasifik.org

digitalpasifik.org is supported by the Australian Government and implemented by the National Library of New Zealand | Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa in collaboration with the National Library of Australia.

Please contact Tim Kong Programme Manager – Pacific Virtual Museum Pilot, Tim.Kong@dia.govt.nz or digitalpasifik@dia.govt.nz

Call for applications: The Endangered Material Knowledge Programme

The Endangered Material Knowledge Programme (EMKP) is a major new programme that will help preserve the knowledge of traditional material practices and knowledge systems that are in danger of disappearing by providing grants for documentation work. It focuses on the ‘made world’ and how people create, build, repair and use the natural resources and objects to shape their societies, spaces, and bodies. The scope of this work will be potentially huge – material practices can range from special events to the production and use of everyday household items like cooking implements, agricultural tools or clothes, as well the houses and buildings that people occupy.

The programme’s objective is to preserve the knowledge in perpetuity through an open access, digital repository. Scholars from across the world are invited to apply for funding to spend time with communities and recording practices using a range of digital formats. Scholars can apply for a small grant, which is awarded for up to one year and with a maximum of £15,000, or a large grant, awarded for up to two years with a maximum budget of £70,000.

Call for applications opens on the 15^th October 2019.

Call closes on the 15^th January 2020.

More information can be found on the British museum website.

Applications can be submitted here (not active until the 15^th October 2019):

https://britishmuseum.submittable.com/

EMKP is supported by Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin and hosted by the Department of Africa, Oceania and the Americas at the British Museum will deliver this three-year programme of grants (2018-2021).

For inquiries please get in touch at emkp@britishmuseum.org

Job Opportunity: Research Assistant in Digital Archiving

Contract: fixed term for 8 months
Reference: 0407
Salary: starting at £29,515 and rising to £33,199 per annum, pro rata
Placed on: 7 December 2018
Closing date: 15 January 2019.  Applications must be received by midnight of the closing date. 
Expected interview date: 4 February 2019
Expected start date: 1 April 2019.

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Job description

The University of Sussex is seeking to appoint a digital assistant to work on a new AHRC funded project, ‘Making African Connections from Sussex and Kent Museums:  Decolonial Futures for Colonial Collections’. The successful candidate will join a team of international scholars and curators engaged in a ground-breaking project that documents the little known historic African collections in South coast museums, focused on 3 specific collections of international significance originating in missionary, military and ethnographic encounters between 1890 and 1940 in Botswana, Sudan and the Namibia/Angola borderlands.

One of the project’s major outputs will be the creation of a digital archive based on the digitization of a minimum 600 artefacts. The Research Assistant’s primary role will be to work on this digital archiving aspect of the project, overseeing metadata capture and digitisation of analogue materials.  It will involve travel to the Royal Engineers Museum (Gillingham) and the Powell Cotton Museum (Birchington on Sea), as well as work at University of Sussex.

The successful candidate will have a Masters-level qualification in archiving and/or digital humanities as well as experience working on similar projects. In addition they will have a) Knowledge of African History and b) Experience of working in a Museum environment. They will be based in the Department of History within the School of History, Art History and Philosophy (HAHP) at the University of Sussex, and will be closely supported by the cross-disciplinary Sussex Humanities Lab (SHL).

Further information is available on the University of Sussex website.