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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - A new and growing data storage project is helping researchers in the North to use and preserve the traditional local knowledge of elders and make it more widely available.

The Exchange of Local Observations and Knowledge of the Arctic, or ELOKA, is a growing reservoir of information gathered by researchers through traditional knowledge rather than scientific studies.

"Most people we work with are trying to share knowledge and find out what each other are doing," said ELOKA project leader Dr. Shari Gearheard from her home in Clyde River.

ELOKA is an online database where researchers can store transcripts or recordings of interviews with elders as they hear their expertise on the places where the elders' people have lived for generations.

The project is co-ordinated by the University of Colorado, which has provided funding and expertise on information management.

In scientific research, academics who study the Arctic or other environments by scientific fieldwork lay out their methods and data when they publish their results. In the past, researchers who employed traditional local knowledge didn't have any place to store their information. They simply kept their tapes or transcripts of interviews with elders with no organized way of sharing it with their colleagues. There was no centralized place to organize what research had been done.

ELOKA allows researchers to access the work of others and build on it, rather than repeating what has been done before.

"Elders are being interviewed over and over, and that's great but it's time-consuming and a waste of resources," Gearheard said.

Additionally, when elders die, their knowledge can be lost unless there's a stable place to keep their interviews.

"It's time to protect all this information that's being collected," Gearheard said.

In recent years, more and more scientists have been turning to the traditional knowledge of local elders to include with their studies of the wildlife and environment of the North. Elders whose ancestors have lived on the same land for generations are becoming respected voices in scientific field research.

Some of the projects taking advantage of ELOKA's service are a study of seasonal sea ice between Alaska and Siberia, a collaboration of Scandinavian scientists and indigenous Saami reindeer herders and an investigation into the purpose of narwhals' tusks - a question that has puzzled marine biologists for centuries.