Interactive book on Dene music co-published by UM Libraries

UM Libraries have teamed up with University of Alberta Press to release a new interactive digital book that highlights the stories and traditional songs of a Dene community in the Northwest Territories.

Dánı̨́ Dene Nenę́ Hǝjı̨ / How Our Land Sings is written by ethnomusicologist Nicole Beaudry, with co-authors Michael Neyelle, Alina Takazo, and Laura Tutcho. It explores the singing, dancing, and drumming traditions of Délı̨nę, a Dene community in the Sahtú region of the Northwest Territories. 

The product of many years of community-based research, the digital book includes 137 audio recordings featuring approximately 150 different songs. Throughout the book, Elders describe in their own language, and in their traditional storytelling style, how songs, dances, and games have been part of a lifestyle rooted to the land. Readers can listen to the audio recordings while reading the chapters, or the multimedia materials can be explored as a separate entryway into the text.

UM Libraries (UML) provided the digital publishing expertise and the platform for hosting the complex project. University of Alberta Press conducted the peer review process and is spreading the word about the open-access book through its marketing and distribution channels.

“We want this project to be a demonstration of how UML can support other digital scholarship projects,” says Bass. Interested UM faculty and instructors are invited to meet with UML’s open publishing team to discuss publication projects that include: 

• collaborations with scholarly publishers, or re-envisioning previously published work as multimodal text,
• integration of long-form argument with multimedia and interactive elements,
• communication of scholarly research and ideas through innovative digital presentation, and
• digital scholarship that encourages public engagement.