ARDS and LDaCA are working together to create a digital archive that supports Yolŋu access to language and cultural materials while ensuring long-term safekeeping under Yolŋu governance.

The ARDS Archive will provide a safe keeping place for digital materials held in ARDS collections, making them appropriately accessible to Yolŋu people and communities as well as ARDS staff.

The archive brings together Yolŋu knowledge and governance with LDaCA’s digital infrastructure and expertise. Using standards and technologies including RO-Crate, Crate-O and Oni, the project will establish sustainable ways to organise materials and metadata, manage collections and support their long-term care.

The project will deliver an archive that ensures access, description and management of materials are guided by Yolŋu Rom (Yolŋu Law), protocols and Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP). Alongside creating infrastructure for ARDS, the collaboration will develop processes, documentation and approaches that can inform similar community-focused archival work across the region.