The Nyingarn Project – is echidna doesn’t walk alone

Presenters: Thomas Watson, Sophie Lewincamp, Clint Bracknell

Nyingarn is a project that gives access to Indigenous language manuscripts. These manuscripts can be hard to get as they are often held in state and national institutions, some distance from the speakers of the languages. Some are written in handwriting, which is difficult to read.The Nyingarn project is converting these manuscripts to text using tools like Optical Character Recognition (OCR), dramatically reducing the workflow for communities doing language revitalisation. With appropriate permissions, manuscript images are transcribed, which makes them searchable and usable. Over time, Nyingarn will be the place to search for early Australian indigenous language records. Our presentation will demonstrate the key capabilities of Nyingarn and explain how we are working as a team to uncover more manuscripts.