Survey forms and correspondence received by the Royal Anthropological Society of Australasia regarding Aboriginal place names, 1899-1903 (State Library of NSW, MLMSS 7603 / Box 4 / Folder 1)
The State Library of NSW has launched an exciting new interactive experiment that uses 100 year-old survey data to map the location and meaning of Indigenous Australian place names across the country. The project called Weemala, which means ‘a big lookout’ in the Sydney language, places historic survey information from the State Library’s collection relating to Australia’s Indigenous communities in a digital landscape.
Weemala was developed by data enthusiast , who has been working with the DX Lab as a ‘Digital-Drop-In’. He created the test platform for Weemala by utilising data derived from Royal Anthropological Society of Australasia (RASA), 1899 – 1903 survey forms. This data was curated by Marc Smith, a student of Master of Arts in Information and Knowledge Management at the University of Technology Sydney, who has been doing an internship with the Indigenous Services team. In developing Weemala, the Library’s Indigenous Services team also worked with Emma Pike from Kaldor Public Art Projects and the artist Jonathan Jones to look at the information contained within the surveys and how they could be further used to explore questions around relationships between land and language.
This digital experiment is part of the Library’s ongoing Rediscovering Indigenous Languages project which aims to make accessible some of the oldest languages in the world by locating, digitising and providing access to Indigenous word lists, language records and other cultural documents, in consultation with the relevant Indigenous communities.
Experience Weemala on the State Library’s website here: dxlab.sl.nsw.gov.au/weemala
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