Mukurtu — Introduction
“[A] grassroots project aiming to empower communities to manage, share, narrate, and exchange their digital heritage in culturally relevant and ethically-minded ways.”
Mukurtu Website
Mukurtu (MOOK-oo-too) is an open-source content management system designed to help communities manage and share digital cultural heritage and language items online. Mukurtu can host a range of cultural and archival items and documents, as well as language and dictionary materials. The materials can then be categorized and linked to other related materials on the site, creating a web of connected and relational community knowledge.
Mukurtu is built on free, open-source code to construct a website and requires advanced tech skills. To create a site using Mukurtu, users must download (or clone) the open-access code for free from Mukurtu’s GitHub repository. Murkurtu can be installed on most commercial web-hosting servers (the Mukurtu team recommends Reclaim Hosting) or hosted independently. The setup process and ongoing maintenance of a Mukurtu site require extensive technical skill, requiring adequate staff and resources to either self-manage the site or contract a web hosting provider. The specific software requirements to run a Mukurtu site and server are detailed on the More Information page under Software Compatibility.
Mukurtu is highly customizable and allows communities to control the organization of their own digital materials. Integrating Traditional Knowledge (TK) Labels, customizable categories, and cultural protocol information supports the development of culturally-appropriate web materials and allows communities to regulate user access levels. Mukurtu’s Roundtrip feature is built to maintain item integrity throughout data import and export and ensures that metadata remains intact. Any data uploaded to a Mukurtu site can be easily exported to batch update items, migrate items to another Mukurtu site, import items onto another platform, or create CSV or XML backups.
Materials are added to a Mukurtu site by registered users who are assigned a group user role. One of the group user roles is Language Contributor, which allows users to add and edit a Mukurtu dictionary. Multiple languages and dialects can be included in one Mukurtu dictionary.
Highlights
- Free, mobile, and open source
- Supports web-friendly access copies of multimedia entries (audio, images, and video)
- Unicode compliant
- Adaptable to the diverse needs of various communities
- Supports Traditional Knowledge (TK) Labels
- Access levels can be determined by cultural protocols
- Metadata remains intact throughout import and export processes
- Registered user roles are managed by the project manager and the community manager
- Thorough training guides and support articles are available on the Mukurtu Support site
- Adding digital heritage content individually requires only basic tech skills
From Urberg, M. 2020. “Digital Humanities Projects and Standards: Let’s Get This Conversation Started!” Information & Services Use, (40): 213-224. https://doi.org/10.3233/ISU-200097 Accessed May 3, 2023.
- Flexible rights access controls a user’s access to content based on their relationship with the content owners
- Users engage with content in a social, cultural, and historical manner determined by the content owners
- Self-defined fields give communities the power to organize data in culturally-appropriate ways
- Collaborative curation and maintenance place content ownership back in the hands of the community
- Content can have multiple sets of metadata, allowing for community-specific access, sensitivities, and categorization
Considerations
- Extensive IT skills are required for initial setup and ongoing maintenance of both site and server
- The cost to contract a web hosting provider, if users are unable to maintain the site independently, may be a barrier for some
- Not intended to create printed materials
- The Mukurtu team does not recommend offline use
- Importing multiple items of digital heritage content from a CSV file requires intermediate tech and coding skills
Alternatives to Mukurtu
Nunaliit is a good alternative to Mukurtu for users specifically looking to link language data and digital mapping technology.
FirstVoices (for communities within British Columbia, Canada) or Living Dictionaries can be used by users looking for a way to publish language data online in a format which supports multiple users. Both FirstVoices and Living Dictionaries do not require users to handle their own web-hosting.
Examples of Communities Using Mukurtu
The Mukurtu Community page showcases several communities who use Mukurtu to access their digital heritage information.
The Plateau Peoples’ Web Portal displays an online dictionary made with Mukurtu. The Chugachmiut Heritage Library and Archive also houses an online dictionary made with Mukurtu.
Support Service
Mukurtu’s Support site offers extensive training guides and support articles. Users are also encouraged to reach out to the Mukurtu team at support@mukurtu.org with any issues or questions not covered by the Support site.
Developer
Murkurtu’s open source code is developed and maintained by the Mukurtu team at the Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation at Washington State University.