LIBRARIAN

Your tiny Miromaa Librarian lives inside your computer and takes care of all your precious materials that you upload into Miromaa, like books, photos, maps, documents, audio, video, stories, songs and more.

Your librarian:

1. Takes a copy of every Multimedia and Library file you upload (leaving the original where it is)
2. Names the copy something that’s easy to find again.
3. Files it away for you in Miromaa’s world-class archival system in your database 
4. Keeps a handy link to it in the Library Panel of your Editor, so you can always find it quickly and easily.
5. Takes care of everything very well, you should see her system! It’s as good as any big flash library anywhere in the world!

Because of her, you can always find everything you upload quickly and easily via the Editor, all without doing any (boring) filing...how convenient is that?!

TECH HEAD

Meet the tech head…who loves nothing more than a Saturday night spent with his laptop and a chocolate milk writing computer code!

The tech head is a language nut. His job is to translate from computer language to human language and back again behind the scenes. This means that you can work with the userfriendly front end of Miromaa and you never have to worry about what this means:

Tech dude will:

1. Manage your Updating (you just have to tell them to)
2. Help the librarian to upload your multimedia files into our user-friendly player so you can watch and listen to them easily
3. Take care of all the behind the scenes work in your database (there is a lot trust us!)
4. Do the painful work of importing files from other complex linguistic software into Miromaa so you can actually use the work
5. Package your work up into files in complex tech language for you to export out and create amazing language resources

P.S. If you are also a tech head and you DO want to talk code, UI, UX or tech specs please get in touch, we can chat over chocolate milk!

ARCHIVIST

Hi, I’m the Archivist. I’m a neat freak, and I love de-cluttering. At the same time I delete nothing! I’m a horder and will never let go of any of your work, because I understand the sacredness of every piece of language evidence that you collect and the importance of keeping it all.

I can help you keep Miromaa organised. I have a system to allow you to respect and document all your entries, keeping only the ones you need access to in your main area, and safely store the others in an easily accessible archive. For example, if you have multiple entries for one word that are very similar, I take care of that stuff for you!

When you tick the ‘Archived’ box in the Controls panel of the Editor I file the entry you have chosen in a special storage unit in your computer where they are kept safe until you decide you need them again and un-tick the ‘Archived’ box. Then I bring them right back, just like that!

PUBLISHER

I’m the publisher, and I’m also an anarchist/activist! I used to work for a big publishing house and won lots of awards, Pulitzers, Nobel prizes…but I became disillusioned with that world where publishing cost so much money and time and the publishers controlled who could and couldn’t publish their works. Then I heard about Miromaa, a program that allows communities to publish their own language resources like picture dictionaries and knowledge books…with only their computers and printers!

I quit my job, got shrunken down and came to work full time inside your computer to help you publish dictionaries, wordlists and even language Apps.

My job as the Miromaa publisher involves:

1. Waiting patiently for you to do your documentation so I can turn all this hard work into amazing resources you can share
2. Giving you a wide range of products to produce yourself, like picture dictionaries, knowledge books, word lists and even Apps
3. Designing and managing the Miromaa Community Dictionary Maker (a world first!)
4. Laying out dictionaries and wordlists for you according to your wishes, like which order the elements appear
5. Working with the manager to give you a lot of filters for choices of inclusions in your resources

You basically tell me what you want in your resources and I will organise it all as you want it and….wait for it…..I’ll have it all in a word doc for you ready to print yourself in less than 3 minutes, you just have to click ‘create’!

TEACHER'S AIDE

Teaching our languages, especially to young people, is so important. That’s why teachers are awesome, especially language teachers!

But it’s not an easy job, we know how much work goes into planning classes and making language materials. So if you’re a teacher, or working with teachers, the Miromaa teacher’s aide can help you by making sure everything you put in Miromaa can be packaged into usable formats and distributed out to community to help with language learning and teaching.

The Teacher’s Aide’s main work is:

1. Managing the Learner screen (a special screen designed with the language learner in mind)
2. Helping you to work with the publisher to create resources suitable for classrooms and other learning environments
3. Working with you and the Manager to control which words are available to learners and which are included in the things you create from Miromaa like Apps, wordlists and dictionaries

YOU, THE MANAGER

When you install Miromaa, you’re the manager of the whole team of Miromaa helpers. You’re not strict because you want to be, it’s just because you are in charge of the most important elements of your Miromaa work, like making sure that your work complies with your community’s protocols, controlling access to your language and making sure all your work never gets lost. That’s why you’re a stickler for the rules… but only the important ones!!!

You also have a bit of a wild side, sometimes rules are made to be broken, such as when you wish to customize Miromaa to suit your language.

The Manager means business and controls the following important aspects of Miromaa including:

1. Setting up your Miromaa database and file system
2. Making sure your work strictly adheres to community protocols
3. Setting up your passwords and usernames
4. Assigning roles to your language team
5. Making sure your work never gets lost by backing up regularly
6. Controlling access to your language via the ‘Control Panel’
7. Managing other members of your (human) language team via the notepad, tasks section and tracking changes section
8. Customising Miromaa for YOUR language and YOUR language needs
9. Servicing language requests simply and easily because you have done all of the above

Overall the manager helps you and your Miromaa team get on with the all important job of documenting and sharing your language by applying strict access and rules to your work and team (without you having to do it)

YOU, THE LANGUAGE DETECTIVE

With Miromaa, you are the Language Detective. Your job here is to collect every important piece of information about your language because they are all pieces of language evidence which can help you solve all sorts of language mysteries.

The detective is in charge of:

1. Documenting every single piece of information (language evidence) about each entry
2. Filling out a range of fields in Miromaa (including knowledge, grammar, history, example uses)
3. Tagging reference points like parts of speech and word category
4. Noting down all the information about where a library item comes from
5. Writing notes about the nuances of a word in the notes section
6. Making sure there are options for heaps of Metadata for your work and library

First and foremost Miromaa is about empowering you, Aboriginal people, Torres Strait Islanders, Native people, Indigenous people to stop your language from being lost or becoming endangered any further. You may obtain Miromaa to use in all of your work or part of your work as it has many functions and features.

Whatever method or route you choose for this language journey you have embarked on we say:

Good luck,
         hang in there,
                    thank you and
                                     WELCOME!