The Search for Family: A Social and Political History of Adoption in Australia

The History of Adoption Project is an ARC-funded project undertaken by researchers from Monash and the Australian Catholic Universities. A central feature of the project is the collection of life stories as self-created text and sound files directly deposited by contributors, and the online publication of edited versions of these. The whole body of public data will be searchable, and collection records will be made available to ANDS for the Australian Research Data Commons. The project therefore requires infrastructure for data capture, enrichment and dissemination.

Data and metadata will be directly deposited by contributors: data as sound files both pre-recorded and directly streamed via Skype and Google Voice; data as text files uploaded by the storyteller; metadata in the form of information identifying the source of the deposit and the historical context of the adoption described. Before deposits are accepted, depositors must sign off on ethical protocols determining their relations with the project and the project’s responsibilities to the depositors. Before data is made accessible to the public it will be edited for legal and ethical purposes, with additional metadata added at this stage. Different levels of access will be needed; in the first instance so that it is accessible only to its author, for review and confirmation; secondly, with full public access.

Click here for the History of Adoption Public Website.

This project consists of 3 tools:

HoaApplicationForm - A survey and story submission form that stores its data/metadata in MediaFlux and notifies the principal researcher via email.

HoAConfluenceSubmit - A bridge that takes stories from MediaFlux and creates Confluence wiki pages for them, containing full DC/MODS metadata as attachments.

FedoraPublish - A Confluence plugin that submits a PDF copy and all attachments from a Confluence wiki page to a new Fedora Commons digital repository object.

This project is supported by the Australian National Data Service (ANDS). ANDS is supported by the Australian Government through the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy Program and the Education Investment Fund (EIF) Super Science Initiative.