[Jobs] JOB: (Darwin, NT) Contract web application devel, Contract

[Linux Jobs]

Contract web application devel, Contract

This is a work opportunity for skilled web application developers.

Charles Darwin University is assisting the Yolgnu people of Northeast Arnhemland to capture and preserve their cultural heritage for future generations. 

It is expected that the development of a suitable platform to house this important cultural material will use open technologies and run on open platforms eg Linux. Depending on the wishes of the Yolngu people it may be released as an open source application at a later date.

See expression of interest below and contact John Greatorex 08 89466983 if interested. 

Feel free to pass this on to whomever may have the skills and be interested in working on this project. 

Further details provided on request. Remuneration negotiable based on experience and demonstrated ability.


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THE RE-DEVELOPMENT OF THE YOLNGU STUDIES DATABASE
Call for Expressions Of Interest:  January 2007
 
Background:
The people of the forty or so Indigenous nations of Northeast Arnhemland, in the Northern Territory of Australia collectively call themselves Yolngu. Each nation has its own language, history and estate. At Charles Darwin University Yolngu language and culture is taught with respect and the consent of Yolngu elders. See: http://www.cdu.edu.au/yolngustudies

The Yolngu Studies team at Charles Darwin University have an on-line database of texts, pdfs, video and audio resources for Yolngu studies students and the general public.  The current form of this database can be viewed at http://pelican.ntu.edu.au/FATSIS/index.cfm?fuseaction=displayMainPage 

We would like the new database to be developed in 2007.

Specifications:
We are now seeking to completely remake the database, because CDU can no longer supports Cold Fusion, and because we would like to implement some new features, including:
Unicode for all texts (for Yolngu languages)
Access to resource upload and some of the resources available only by administrator password. 
Easy upload of text, graphic, audio and video files. 
Single-field metadata,Fuzzy search capabilities (using a lemma form generator)
Web based, accessing a database stored on a CDU server.
Eventually contain around 300 videos averaging 10 mins each. (ie the bulk of the memory requirements)
Some of the resources will be clustered (eg video, audio and text file associated with one resource) and linked to a single metadata entry. 

Notes on the fuzzy search mechanisms:
Some of the fuzzy text search functionality may be expensive and complex to develop and implement, so an intensive iterative development process will be required. 

Notes of specific requirements for Aboriginal knowledge practices:
Some of the key aspects of the database design have been developed through collaborative research with Aboriginal knowledge owners, producers and users. Some of the empirical and theoretical work which led to these specifications is further discussed on the Indigenous Knowledge and Resource Management in Northern Australia website (www.cdu.edu.au/ik) Particular aspects of this design are described in the pdf documents downloadable from http://www.cdu.edu.au/centres/ik/db_TAMI.html
metadata. Conventional databases have metadata protocols which embed western taxonomic and structural assumptions about the nature of the world.  These may preclude indigenous ways of doing knowledge. Also the complex requirements of field-based metadata input/upload may inhibit Aborigial people from using them, opening the potential for metadata to enact a western bias. We also want to make all text in the data and the metadata searchable.
Text dependence. Other aspects of our work focus upon text-free search interfaces.  This project will depend upon text, but not upon the ability to spell.  The glossariser will reduce the searchable text options to a list of words which are already contained in the metadata.  The user will only be required to identify and click key words in the most basic search mechanism. 
Fuzzy-searching will be available through a lemmatizer.

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Contact: People who are interested in being part of this project should contact John Greatorex 
john.greatorex at cdu.edu.au 
08 89466983
Applications close: 1st March 2007