Skip to Content

Digital Information Systems & Cultural Heritage Working Group

Co-chairs: Sue Rowley (University of BC) & Eric Kansa (University of California - Berkeley, School of Information)

 

To better reflect a more balanced mandate, this Working Group has ”rebranded” itself as Digital Information Systems & Cultural Heritage. Co-chairs Sue Rowley and Eric Kansa, assisted by PhD student Sarah Carr-Locke, are examining how new information and communication technologies may either challenge or assist ethical exchanges of information between Indigenous and research communities. Further, they explore the scholarly and legal debates around Indigenous communities’ uses of digital technologies to extend, redefine, adapt, revitalize and protect traditional knowledge in view of concerns raised by Indigenous and other descendant communities regarding inappropriate uses of their traditional knowledge, and researchers concerns around the uses of research results. This Working Group is our springboard for exploring the thriving world of digital humanities in general, both academic and more informal, that engages with digital media.  If you are interested in or work on these topics, please contact Sue and Eric.

Selected Activities and Output:

• Development of a webinar on key issues and concepts related to the WG theme to be showcased at the 2011 Mid-term Conference, encouraging other WGs to utilize this mode of creative discussion;

• “Remixable Cultural Heritage: The Promise and Problems of Open Data, and Radical Transparency for the Past on the World Wide Web,” a presentation by Kansa at the May 2011 “Why Does the Past Matter?” conference of the UMass Center for Heritage and Society; and

• Vetting the “Guidelines for Use of Video,” collaboratively developed by IPinCH team members for the Flipcam project, intended as useful guidelines for sharing cultural context in digital video.


Publications:

Brown, D.* and G. Nicholas. forthcoming. Protecting Indigenous Cultural Property in the Age of Digital Democracy: Conventional Legal Approaches to Canadian First Nations and Maori Heritage. Journal of Material Culture.

Nicholas, G. forthcoming 2011. Indigenous Cultural Heritage in the Age of Technological Reproducibility: Towards a Postcolonial Ethic of the Public Domain. In Dynamic Fair Dealing: Creating Canadian Cultural Heritage Online, edited by R. Coombe, et al. University of Toronto Press.

 

Presentations:

Carr-Locke, S.* 2011. Social Networking. IPinCH website blog post. www.sfu.ca/ipinch/node/751 May 17.

Carr-Locke, S.* 2011. Remix, Copyright, A2K, and Indigenous IP Rights. IPinCH website blog post. www.sfu.ca/ipinch/node/754 Jun. 6.

Kansa, Eric. 2011. Remixable Cultural Heritage: The Promise and Problems of Open Data, and Radical Transparency for the Past on the World Wide Web. “Why Does the Past Matter?,” Center for Heritage and Society, UMass-Amherst, April 3–7.

 

 

 



Theme by Dr. Radut.