Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Alutiiq language materials

The Archive just received a deposit of Alutiiq language materials prepared by the Native Village of Afognak with funding from the Administration for Native Americans. The materials include a curriculum workbook, a teacher's guide, and several story books. Materials have been adapted for the Kodiak dialect from materials originally prepared in the Chugach dialect. In addition, the materials are supplemented by new recordings. All of these materials can be accessed online at the Alutiiq Language Elementary Curriculum website.

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Hughes and Huslia Elders visit ANLA


A group of visitors from Hughes and Huslia visited the Archive on November 12 as part of a Gates of the Arctic National Park repatriation project. More information about this visit, along with some photos, is available on the Talking Alaska blog.

Friday, October 22, 2010

DY volume (finally)

We finally now have a copy of the Dene-Yeniseian volume. I cataloged it as CA973K2010. Needs a spine label.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Dealing with backups of digital files for other organizations

Karen Linnell and Tana Finnestad stopped by today to bring updated digital files for backup from the C'ek'aedi Hwnax project. I transferred these onto the computer but also wanted to upload them to the server for preservation. To facilitate this I created a new, ad-hoc record for the entire set of files: AT-AHF-2010. You can view it at:

http://www.uaf.edu/anla/collections/search/resultDetail.xml?id=AT-AHF-2010

I then put the entire batch of files (150 MB) into a folder titled AT-AHF-2010 and put that into the "Online" folder.

Since I specified a value in the Restrictions field, these files will not actually be accessible to users, but the WILL be preserved.

Friday, October 15, 2010

Automatic synchronization of online files

Online files now synchronize automatically every night. Simply drop the files into the "Online" folder:
    D:\DigitalArchive\Online
and they will be uploaded automatically the next even. Files still need to be enclosed in a folder whose title is the same as the identifier of the item.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Comparative Athabaskan

I am working on a short pilot project with Digital Photo services in the Rasmussen Library to begin scanning the paper materials in the archive. To start I cataloged contributions to the Comparative Athabaskan holdings by M. Krauss. 5 boxes CA961K1961- CA961K1983 were delivered to the "scanner" this morning.

restrictions and digital files

It was pointed out at the Archive meeting yesterday that we need a way to restrict access to digital files. The current way of doing this is to upload them to the server but set the permissions of the file itself to "no access". But that's a bit clunky. So here's a better way.

I've modified the results display to only provide hyperlinks for digital files in cases where the "restrictions" field is empty. Also, the CD icon in the results display is only shown if the restrictions field is empty (unless logged in as an admin, in which case  a red !! displays after the CD icon). So now when we scan something which we don't want to make available online (e.g., Jim Kari's hand written Ahtna field notes), we can upload the files as usual to the server but put a note in the restrictions field "no public access to digital files"

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

ASNA materials

Slowly uploading ANSA materials which were sent to me by Reader Michael (see http://asna.ca/alaska). I'm entering these under the ANSA collection identifier. Using the Eskimo supplement catalog to find Identifiers. Note in many cases our materials include more than just the original Russian Orthodox documents (e.g., English translations), so our materials will still need to be scanned by DPS. See for example:

https://www.uaf.edu/anla/collections/search/resultDetail.xml?resource=1151

Data comments

The detailed results page (resultDetail.xml) now displays Data Comments when you are logged in as an administrator. This makes it easier to keep track of those comments without having to go into edit mode to see them. We should make it a practice to use the Data Comments field more often.

Catalog updates

I'm in the process of cleaning up a lot of catalog entries, doing things like adding Subject Languages and Linguistic Type. All values of "Subject" have been migrated to corresponding "LingType" values. LingType will now supersede Subject in the record entry and "Subject" can be ignored.

Made a few other improvements to the interface. The list of languages in the search page is now reduced to Alaskan langs. Once all resources are coded for language we will be able to use this to generate container lists by language rather than relying on the Identifier code. This is critical, because the ANLC numbers are not captured by 2-3 letter code. Also, some languages have more than one code (e.g., Alutiiq is both SU and AS).

Friday, October 1, 2010

Archive receives NSF grant for documents collection


The Archive was recently awarded a significant grant from the National Science Foundation to support development of digital access to over 10,000 documents in the collection. This project, entitled Digital Infrastructure for Alaskan and Neighboring Languages, (NSF #1003481), will create a digital repository providing access to the unique and world-renown collection of Native American language documentation housed at the Alaska Native Language Archive (ANLA) at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The comprehensive scope of the ANLA collection is unparalleled among linguistic archives across the world. Approximately three quarters of the material consists of original archival manuscripts, including field notes of prominent scholars of Alaskan languages, including Knut Bergsland, Michael Krauss, James Kari, Jeff Leer, Irene Reed, and Eliza Jones. The collection also includes copies of items found elsewhere only in private hands or in obscure archives in Russia. Much of the collection has never been cataloged. The creation of a digital repository will enhance arctic research infrastructure by providing real-time digital access to archival documents for a broad range of researchers and Native peoples across Alaska, the arctic, and beyond, thereby providing the foundation for a new era of language and culture scholarship in the arctic.

Cataloging Published Books

We've been working with the Rasmuson Library on organizing and cataloging all of our published books. They will be searchable on Goldmine, but housed here at ANLA. Look in the shelves by the "Shift in Progress" signs in the Archive for books, or just ask me!

Archive database down 10/1

OIT plans to do some major repairs on the Archive db today. Please refrain from editing the db. We may loose access to the db for part of the day.

Thursday, September 30, 2010

Cleaning up the Language field

I started writing some scripts to clean up the language field in the db. Managed to assign Dena'ina as subject language to all items with TI identifiers. I'll continue this work once the db tomorrow's migration is finished.

Yup'ik songs about salmon

Niel McCarthy of the BBC called this morning asking for copies of Yup'ik songs or stories related to salmon. He is working on a story about Bristol Bay salmon fishery.

neil.mccarthy@bbc.co.uk

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Merging qenaga.org and naqenaga.org

Received inquiry from Michael Christian regarding possible merger of content on qenaga.org (created by ANLC NSF project) and naqenaga.org (created by Michael under contract with ANHC. This brings up the issue of attempting to reconcile the Dena'ina records at qenaga.org/archive and our own records. I think ANLA should hold the master records, which can then be referenced from naqenaga.org. So we will need to come up with a plan to check through all those records, and also make sure we have digital content.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Reader Michael

Reader Michael emailed today to ask about status of church documents which he has digitized and sent to us. These are materials already in our collection. Some have already been posted as digital files, but others are pending. We need to catch up. He wants to send more, and I told him that would be great.

Example:

Identifier: AL825V1840b
Title: Ukazanie puti na tsarstvie nebesnoe, puchenie na Aleutsko-Lis'evskom yazyke. [Guideroad into the heavenly kingdom, taught in the Aleutian language.]
ANLA page: http://www.uaf.edu/anla/collections/search/resultDetail.xml?resource=5788

OR

http://www.uaf.edu/anla/collections/search/resultDetail.xml?id=AL825V1840b

Friday, September 24, 2010

Archive Events


Marilyn Savage, Alestine Andre and Gary Holton

Marilyn Savage of Ft. Yukon, AK, Alestine Andre of Tsiigehtchic, NWT and Gary Holton discuss the Gwich'in Prayer books in the Alaska Native Language Archive on September 24, 2010

Updated author codes (from Stacey)

Stacey sent a list of new author codes. I posted it to Google Docs

Alestine Andre visits

Alestine Andre of the Gwich'in Social and Cultural Institute visited on Sept 24 along with Marylin Savage (of Fairbanks). They were looking for Tukudh language materials and prayers. They got copies of YNLC/Ritter Tukudh learning materials and some copies of MacDonald prayers.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

The Dene-Yeniseian Connection

The current issue (Volume 5, New Series) of the Anthropological Papers of the University of Alaska (APUA) is titled The Dene-Yeniseian Connection. The editors are James Kari and Ben Potter. This 369-page volume contains 18 the papers from the Feb. 26-29, 2008 Symposium in Alaska plus several contributed papers. The 67-page lead article by Edward J. Vajda (Western Washington University) presents extensive evidence for Dene-Yeniseian. Accompanying Vajda’s paper are primary data on Na-Dene historical phonology by Jeff Leer, along with critiques by several linguistic specialists and articles on a range of topics (archaeology, prehistory, ethnogeography, genetics, kinship, folklore) by experts in these fields. For the Table of Contents and ordering information go to www.uaf.edu/anthro/apua.

Friday, April 16, 2010

Orthodox Russian texts


Several Orthodox Russian texts in the Archive have been digitally typeset by the All Saints of North America Orthodox Church. These include materials in Aleut, Alutiiq, Tlingit, and Yup'ik language. The materials can be accessed directly via the ASNA website or via the ANLA catalog.