Indigenous Studies Portal the “iPortal”

http://iportal.usask.ca/

Developed at the University of Saskatchewan, the the Indigenous Studies Portal (iPortal) is a fascinating project that connects faculty, students, researchers and members of the community with electronic resources: books, articles, theses, documents, photographs, archival resources, maps, among the many digital objects from the library.

The vision of the Indigenous Studies Portal is to provide one place to look to find resources for Indigenous studies.   As of March, 2010, the iPortal has more than 21,000 records, including the Our Legacy archival records recently harvested. This includes photos, anthropological field notes, diaries, correspondence and other textual documents.  In linking to the Indigenous programs and events at the University of Saskatchewan, the iPortal offers specialized tools for teaching and scholarship.

What’s most important in this posting is that it shows that technology can influence through participation.  Part of the reason is that the iPortal’s designers are interested in collaborating and/or partnering with academic and community based organizations and agencies across Canada.  For instance, its recent digitization projects collaborated with:

1. archival organizations in Saskatoon and in Northern Saskatchewan,

2. Brandon University and the digitization of nine volumes (from 1997-2005) of the Canadian Journal of Native Studies, and

3. an out-of-print book by Purich Publishing in Saskatoon, “Continuing Poundmaker and Riel’s Quest”.

I think that this reveals that culture can be created and sustained through active promotion of collaboration between organizations.  People can and do change the way culture is represented, and technology should be seen as the medium that does this.   As Marshall McLuhan once said, the medium is the message.