Washington State University (Washington State University Vancouver Library)

Open-source and commercial tools for building and operating digital libraries work well for a wide range of organizations but are less well suited to the needs of tribal libraries, archives, and museums, owing to cultural protocols for sharing information, diverse intellectual property systems among tribes, and the fractured or distributed nature of collections about indigenous groups. To address these needs, researchers at Washington State University will partner with Smallbean, Inc.; the University of California-Berkeley; the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums; CivicActions, Inc.; the National Anthropological Archives; and the National Museum of the American Indian to deploy, evaluate, and refine a software tool that accommodates tribal organizations’ needs. The tool, named Mukurtu, will be made freely available as open-source software, complete with full documentation and a toolkit for tribal organizations wishing to construct and operate digital libraries.