Considerations for Future-Proofing Digital First Nations Music Collections

Researchers, when searching for musical material through an online catalogue, may scarcely consider how the resources included in the search results came to be suggested by the catalogue system. A catalogue’s search results are dependent on the metadata that describes the resources held within that collection, which can be stored in a variety of formats, standardised or unstandardised, each with their own benefits and limitations with respect to discoverability and interoperability with other systems. Music originating from First Nations communities around Australia often requires unique contextual knowledge in order to be discovered easily in a collection. Any First Nations music recordings that are held in a digital archive would ideally require that contextual knowledge to be stored as metadata, alongside the recording: this would ensure access conditions are respected (where appropriate), and information on which First Nations communities are involved is readily accessible.