Digital Pasifik is part of the Pacific Virtual Museum pilot programme that was officially launched in November 2020. The website serves as a bridge between the holders of knowledge of Pacific individuals, groups, communities, villages, and islands and the holders of the tā’onga (treasures) Museums, Libraries, Galleries, Archives, and Universities. The website shares content from over 800 institutions across the world. Digital Pasifik virtually connects the remotest users in the Pacific with Museums, Libraries, Universities, and Communities thousands of miles away. Allowing users to access Pacific cultural history through a single platform, makes this website a strong candidate for a digital preservation award as its objectives support digital preservation through the collection of stories, knowledge, and memories captured on a digital platform before they are lost.
What sets digitalpasifik.org apart from other websites is that it has been designed for Pacific people and the challenges they face in accessing digital collections online. Pacific people have lost generations of their culture, history, practices, ancestors, and artifacts due to colonisation, and these lay in institutions thousands of miles away from their homeland. Digitalpasifik allows Pacific cultural heritage to be visible and accessible for people in and of the Pacific. These tā’onga may never be able to return home, but allowing Pacific people to access digital versions of their history will allow them to reconnect and revive cultural practices.
In some areas of the Pacific, internet access is either limited, unavailable, or unaffordable for users. Digitalpasifik closes the digital divide and developed the website to work fast on low bandwidths ensuring each webpage is under a megabyte, making our website affordable and accessible for users. User testing in the Pacific was important to understand our users and how the website stands up in Pacific networks. Some important feedback we got was ‘My grandma can speak English but can’t read English. When designing a website that is inclusive of the entire Pacific, including over 1000+ languages and represents over 32+ countries/islands. The website has been designed so anyone can navigate it, including our Pacific elders who speak indigenous languages can operate the website by the use of iconography throughout the platform.
The importance of bringing back what was lost and sharing it for future generations is what our user contribution aims to do. This feature allows users to share their knowledge, memories, and experiences and identify family and friends in the collections. Users can correct inaccurate content information and content partners can learn more about their collections through the user. Often these collections are written from a colonial view, this feature allows Pacific people to own the narrative and correct what has been written about them. This feature is where our strengths lie in Digital preservation and is considered by users as the best part of our website with over 100 stories shared on the website User contributions | Digital Pasifik. It connects users to our collections and often serves as a connecting point between users, often stumbling across genealogical ties by mistake.
A key part of this project is engaging and creating relationships with cultural heritage organisations and communities in the Pacific. Many of these institutions don’t have the resources to create their own platforms to share their collections online to the standards of larger institutions around the world. Digitalpasifik allows Pacific institutions and communities in the Pacific to share their collections using platforms that are manageable for their institution and free. For example, Digitalpasifik has worked with Solomon Islands National Museum, and they have created a YouTube channel to upload their archival videos. Since their collections are now online, digitalpasifik are now able to share their collections alongside larger institutions around the world. Other Pacific content creators such as Talanoa with Dr T and NGO Pasifika Renaissance who have a large Pacific following and do amazing work to capture culture and heritage of the Pacific using platforms like YouTube and Facebook. These platforms may not but preservation quality but groups like them are capturing the stories from Pacific people that many traditional Museums and Libraries aren’t. Digitalpasifik are honoured that we have the technology within our website to be able to share their YouTube content that many websites and institutions don’t, so that Pacific voices and stories can be accessed and heard.
Over the past 4 years, digitalpasifik has been leading the way for cultural institutions to ensure their collections are visible and accessible for the communities their collections belong to. Many Pacific people are unaware that these precious ta’onga exist around the world. The power of giving Pacific people an opportunity to re-unite with digital cultural collections that were once lost empowers them to connect with their own cultural identity.