Frequently Asked Questions

The Notices were designed to be applicable to any institution or repository and have been used around the world on a range of collections and data. An institution might be an archive, library, museum, historical society, gallery, data repository, university, or media production company. Indigenous institutions can use Notices, but may find the Labels to be a better fit. If you are not sure if Notices are applicable to you, please contact us.

Yes. Notices have been used in multiple publications. See our blog for the latest examples.

The Notices were developed to make visible existing Indigenous rights and interests that derive from research contexts. Increasingly publishers are supporting greater transparency and integrity in research, and the Notices help do this. If you are interested in using a Notice in a publication, please contact the Local Contexts team with details about your interest.

The Disclosure and Engagement Notices work to activate researcher and institutional responsibility to identify potential Indigenous rights and interests. They can be used without community approval. The Collections Care Notices are only to be used after engaging with Indigenous community authorities.

Decolonial research methodologies insist that Indigenous interests should be addressed and included in any research at the first instance. This means that Indigenous Peoples are more likely to be connected to the research and its results and derive benefits from it in the future.  Adding the Notice, as a first step, opens the space for those rights and interests to be clarified and expanded on by Indigenous communities over time.

The Traditional Knowledge Notice recognizes that there could be cultural rights, protocols, and responsibilities involving traditional knowledge associated with the material. For example, a TK Notice can be used in archives to indicate that there is traditional knowledge embedded in collections. A TK Notice could also be used in publications that draw on Traditional Knowledge. For more, see the question Why does Local Contexts use the term ‘Traditional Knowledge’? above.

The Biocultural Notice recognizes the rights of Indigenous peoples to define the use of information, collections, data, and digital sequence information generated from the biodiversity and genetic resources associated with their traditional lands, waters, and territories. For example, a BC Notice could be used on a plant specimen from Indigenous lands. A Biocultural Notice could also be used for soil, water, or biodiversity samples.

Yes. The TK and the BC Notice were designed so that they could be used separately and/or together.

Historical Indigenous collections are extremely difficult to find because they are often mis-labeled, misattributed, or have missing information. This makes an ongoing connection to collections by Indigenous peoples and communities a very slow and labor-intensive process. By disclosing Indigenous rights and interests, the Notices help make Indigenous collections and data Findable and Accessible into the future.

The Notices operationalize the CARE Principles for the Governance of Indigenous Peoples Data. 

Specifically, they help researchers and institutions make clear and visible Indigenous rights as a standard research responsibility. By connecting Indigenous peoples to research conducted on Indigenous lands and waters, the Notices also increase capacity for Indigenous peoples to derive collective benefit from this research. 

The Notices support the application of Labels which reflect Indigenous ethics and protocols of engagement, collaboration and partnership. The Notices create the pathway for Indigenous authority using the Labels to be included in historical and future collections, samples, and data. 

For more information about how the the application of the CARE Principles are supported by Local Contexts, see the following articles:

• Lydia Jennings, Talia Anderson, Andrew Martinez, et al., “Applying the ‘CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance’ to ecology and biodiversity research” (2023) 
• Neha Gupta, Andrew Martindale, Kisha Supernant, and Michael Elvidge, “The CARE Principles and the Reuse, Sharing, and Curation of Indigenous Data in Canadian Archaeology” (2023)

The Labels are a tool for Indigenous communities and local organizations to clarify their rights and express more precisely the nature of their relationship to collection or data. 

The Notices were developed for researchers and institutions to identify Indigenous rights and interests. The Notices are not customizable.

In many cases, Notices can be a placeholder until a community/communities apply their Labels.

Local Contexts uses “community” to inclusively refer to Indigenous Peoples around the world who may be organized and self-governed as Nations, First Nations, Tribes, Confederations, Land Councils, and similar collective groups with ancestral ties to the lands and natural resources where they live, occupy, or from which they have been displaced. In a US context, this includes Native Hawaiian Organizations and Alaskan Native Village Corporations. Following the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), Local Contexts recognizes the sovereign right of Indigenous Peoples to self-describe and to determine qualifications for membership and/or citizenship. 

We also recognize the varied contexts, histories, and politics around the world that may result in a collective group with ancestral ties to lands to not identify as Indigenous, particularly communities outside settler colonial states. In some parts of Asia and Africa, state governments use the term “ethnic groups” or “ethnic minorities,” while these groups themselves identify as Indigenous. 

For this reason, our use of “community” also includes local/traditional communities who are self-governing collectives with intergenerational connections to places, knowledge, and worldviews. Though often referred to together as Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs), we recognize that Indigenous Peoples hold distinct collective rights defined in UNDRIP.

References:

• “United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples” (2007)
• Cultural Survival and First Peoples Worldwide, “Statement towards Discontinuing the Use of the Collective Term ‘Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities’ or ‘IPLC’” (2022)
• United Nation Department of Economic and Social Affairs, “State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples” (2009)

The Local Contexts tools work together to support the proper recognition of Indigenous rights and interests in traditional knowledge and biocultural data. The Labels make clear ongoing Indigenous relationships, obligations, protocols, and responsibilities to information and data as well as expectations for its future use and access. By using the Labels, you can share how collections or data should be treated and used into the future. When applied outside your community, Labels encourage researchers and institutions to adopt new practices about Indigenous data sovereignty, Indigenous cultural authority, and access and control of data and collections.

The Notices are specifically for archives, museums, libraries, universities, and data repositories that are engaging in processes of collaboration and trust building with communities who have been excluded and written out of the record through colonial processes of documentation and record keeping. The Notices are useful to communities because they communicate in what capacity institutions are willing to work with Indigenous and local communities. The Notices can be added to collections or data where there may be Indigenous interests and rights, also making it easier to identify these materials.

Notices are generated in the Local Contexts Hub. Institutions and researchers can notify relevant communities through the Hub. Public Projects can also be shared by its link. You can also see public Projects and Open to Collaborate Notices placed by institutions and researchers in the Registry and Projects Board.

Notices are a valuable asset for any university, museum, library, archive, cultural organization, data repository, or research institute or lab. They communicate to Indigenous communities and local organizations that an institution is open to collaborate and willing to do the work of going through collections to determine what items need proper cultural attribution and additional community perspectives.

The Notices are a pathway for implementing Labels from Indigenous communities, and can start the process of meaningful collaboration between institutions and communities.

Notices are only to be generated through an institution account in the Local Contexts Hub. After the Notices have been generated, they can be added to your own systems using the Hub API, embedding, or by download. Read more about the Hub in our Getting Started on the Hub guide.

The requirements for displaying Notices can be found in our Notices Style and Usage Guide.

Labels may be applied by Indigenous communities to collections or data at your institution. This will be done through the Local Contexts Hub. After the Labels have been applied by a community, they can be added to your own systems using the Hub API, embedding, or by download. For more information about collaborating with Indigenous communities on the Local Contexts Hub, see our Getting Started on the Hub guide.

The requirements for displaying Labels can be found in our Labels Style and Usage Guide.

You can add a Notice at any time during your research. 

Labels are for use by Indigenous communities and local organizations. As an Indigenous researcher, you may work with your community to develop Labels, which the community can then apply to your research.

A community account is for an Indigenous or local community entity who can customize and apply Traditional Knowledge and Biocultural Labels, and create Projects. Community account holders have the option to join the Membership program.

An institution account is for a cultural or research institution, data repository, or other organization, typically not governed by an individual Indigenous or local community, that will use Notices and create Projects for the Indigenous collections or data they manage. Institution account holders join the Subscription program to apply Notices and support community application of Labels.

A researcher account is for an individual who conducts research independently or in an institution, who will use Notices and create Projects for data, publications, and other outputs. Researcher account holders join the Subscription program in the individual tier.

An integration partner account is for an organization that integrates a connection to the Local Contexts Hub into their platforms to enable their clients, customers, or contributors to access Labels and Notices. Integration partner account holders become certified through the Integration Partner program.

Read more about these programs on the Hub Agreement Programs page.

On the Hub, any individual person can be a user within multiple accounts and account types. An Indigenous researcher affiliated with an institution may have a researcher account, be a user in a community account, and be a user in an institution account simultaneously.

To determine which account type you want to start with, it may be helpful to understand how an account is created on the Hub, as well as what work is appropriately suited within an account. If you have any questions about which account type(s) might suit you best, please email us.

Community accounts
If you have created a community account on the Hub that has previously gone through the confirmation process, you will still have access to all the features of your account. We will be reaching out over the next few months with information about our free Membership program that allows you to have a voice in the governance of Local Contexts.

Institution accounts
If you have created an institution account on the Hub and have completed a subscription agreement, there is no need to do anything. Your account will remain active.

If you have created an institution account on the Hub and have not yet completed a subscription agreement, your account will have limited functionality until a Subscription Agreement is completed. You should have received an email with additional details about our updated model. If you have not heard from us, please check your spam/junk folder and email us.

Researcher accounts
If you have created a researcher account and have completed a subscription agreement, there is no need to do anything. Your account will remain active.

If you have created a researcher account and have not yet completed a subscription agreement, your account will have limited functionality until a subscription agreement is completed. You should have received an email with additional details about our updated model that includes fee-free subscriptions for researcher accounts. If you have not heard from us, please check your spam/junk folder and email us.

Integration Partner accounts

The new integration partner account type has limited functionality until an integration partner agreement is completed and the integration has been certified. All newly initiated integration partner accounts receive an email with information about these processes. If you have not heard from us, please check your spam/junk folder and email us.

The Hub was created to facilitate the application of Labels and Notices, and to also protect their integrity. Labels and Notices are only accessed through the Hub after establishing an account with the appropriate authorization. Applying Labels and Notices through the Hub creates a traceable record of their use, supporting their veracity.

Labels and Disclosure Notices can be applied to a Local Contexts Hub Project. A Project is created by an account in the Hub to describe what the Labels or Notices are being applied to. A Project might represent a collection of thousands, or a single dataset, depending on how the Labels and Notices should be added. After Labels or Notices are applied to a Project, the Labels and Notices can then be used in your own databases, websites, publications, and elsewhere.

Collections Care Notices and the Engagement Notice can only be accessed through the Hub, but are not applied through a Project.

See our Hub guide for more information about how Labels and Notices are used through the Hub.

Labels can only be applied by a community account. A community account which is confirmed by an authorized community representative can then apply their Labels to Projects. A community account does not need to be a Member in order to use their Labels.

Notices can only be generated and applied by subscribed institution and researcher accounts. Integration Partners can use the Open to Collaborate Notice after their account has been certified.

By becoming a Member, community representatives can participate in the governance of Local Contexts through quarterly meetings and the Council nomination process. For more about the Membership program, see the Members page.

Any confirmed community account on the Hub has the option to nominate a representative to become a Member. This is a new process, so we will be reaching out to existing accounts over the next few months with information about the program. New community accounts, upon confirmation, will receive information on the optional process to become a Member.

There are no fees for the membership program, or for having a community account on the Hub.

All institutions with Indigenous collections and data have a responsibility to firstly disclose the location of these materials and secondly to include Indigenous provenance, protocols, and permissions in the record. Institutions and researchers that operationalize the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance not only raise awareness of Indigenous data sovereignty but also provide a means to take meaningful and productive action. For more about the subscription program, see the Subscribers page.

Any organization that wants to use Notices can choose to join with a small, medium, or large subscription. Each size includes access to a certain number of users, API keys, Projects, and notifications.

To determine which type might be best for your organization, consider how many users, API keys, Projects, and notifications you might need over a year:

• Users – number of administrators and editors who can be in your account
• API keys – number of API keys your account can create; you may need more keys if you have multiple distinct systems that will use the API
• Projects – number of Projects (including Sub-Projects) your account can create
• Notifications – number of times you can notify a community account about a Project

If you need more users, API keys, Projects, or notifications mid-year, you can upgrade your subscription or add a bundle.

To learn more about these features on the Hub, see our Hub guide. If you would like to discuss your use of the Hub with a team member, please email us.

Yes, institutional Subscribers can have a multi-year subscription at the current subscription rates. In this case, the total subscription costs would be invoiced upfront. Otherwise, subscriptions are invoiced annually.

Yes, institutional Subscribers can choose when their subscription year starts. The account will not have full functionality until the subscription starts.

If a subscription lapses or is paused, the account will revert to having limited functionality. Any Labels and Notices that were applied while the account was subscribed can remain in place. Unsubscribed accounts will not be able to generate new Notices or make edits to existing Projects, but notified community accounts can continue to add or remove Labels to the Project.

An integration partner is an organization that offers a platform that is used by customers, clients, and contributors. Some examples of integration partners are iPlaces and Omeka.

Communities and institutions integrating the Labels and Notices into their own internal systems, or into an instance of a platform, are not considered Integration Partners.

For those interested in becoming Integration Partners, we recommend reviewing our Integration Partner Guide and reaching out to integrationpartners@localcontexts.org to get started.

The Sandbox Hub can be used for testing Hub workflows. The sandbox Hub is similar to the live Hub, but is a “working site” with no guarantees and some untested features. We suggest keeping a separate copy of any information you would like to save, as data is regularly removed from the Sandbox Hub.

The Sandbox and live Hub require separate registrations. On the live Hub, you will receive emails related to Projects, Labels, and Notices, which you will not receive on the Sandbox Hub. Accounts on the Sandbox Hub can also be created without the agreements that are needed on the live Hub, but have limited functionality to protect the integrity of the Labels and Notices.

Labels and Notices are applied in the Hub for use on websites, in databases, within publications, and more. 

Notices and Labels can be implemented in three ways: 

• Using the Hub API, which provides a live connection to a Project on the Hub
• Embedding Hub Projects, which provides a live connection to a Project on the Hub
• Downloading Project information, which supports static implementation of Notices or Labels

The use of the Hub API or Project embedding allows for automatic updates to reflect any changes made to Projects or applied Labels (such as which Labels or Notices are applied, or any updates to Label text by a community). However, static implementation of Notices or Labels may be a good fit for uses such as a print publication. Some systems may also be unable to access third-party APIs. If you or your system administrators are unsure about which implementation method is the best fit, please contact us.

Any Projects added to the Hub from before the February 2025 update will remain visible and accessible through the Hub API v1.

We will continue to maintain v1 of the API for some time and will inform users when we will start to phase out support for v1 of the API.

To view Projects created after the February 2025 update, your connection will need to be updated to v2 of the API. V2 of the API will require the use of an API key. For more information, visit our API guide.

Beginning in 2024, Local Contexts has focused its technical development on the integration of the Membership, Subscription, and Integration Partner programs into the Local Contexts Hub. Development has also introduced the first iteration of GIS features and ORCID integration, and contributions to metadata schema mapping.

Upcoming development will focus on the next phases of GIS features and ORCID integrations, an account dashboard, expanded collaboration tools, additional metadata schema mapping, and a mobile app version of the Hub.

Hub registration is available to the following people and entities: 

• Indigenous communities (such as First Nations, Tribes, Bands, Iwi, etc.)
• Cultural and research institutions (such as museums, libraries, archives, universities, research institutions, data repositories, etc.)
• Researchers (an individual who carries out academic or scientific research independently or in an institution)

Individuals can register and create or join multiple accounts and multiple account types. For more about these account types, see the question below: What type of account should I create or join?

A community account is for community entities or community representatives, such as Cultural Department, Tribal and Historical Preservation Officers, Community Center, Preservation Office, Community Library, Archive, Museum, Land Council or another community entity. A community account can customize Labels, create Projects, and apply Labels on Projects. A community account may receive notifications about Notices that institutions or researchers have placed to disclose a community interest in collections, items, samples, or data. 

An institution account is for a cultural or research institution, such as archive, library, museum, historical society, gallery, data repository, or university, that is generating or stewarding Indigenous collections or data. An institution account can create Projects, apply Notices and notify Indigenous communities about these Projects. Multiple staff members can join an institution account.

A researcher account is for individual researchers. Like an institution account, researchers can also create Projects, apply Notices, and notify Indigenous communities about these Projects. Every researcher account is only for one person, while an institution account is for multiple staff members.

A service provider account is for organizations that offer platforms that can be used by users to organize or share collections or data. This includes collections management systems, digital asset management systems, repositories, and databases.

During the registration process, you can search existing community and institution accounts. You can also search the Registry, which is available publicly.

There are three account roles for members in community and institution accounts: Administrators, editors, and viewers. Administrators are responsible for managing membership and customizing Labels and Projects. Editors are responsible for customizing Labels and Projects. Viewers can see activity happening within the account, but cannot interact.

Yes. You can remove a member in your account on the account’s Members tab.

Researcher accounts are for individuals. Unlike community and institution accounts, others cannot join a researcher account. You can have multiple accounts — for example, an individual can be a member of their community’s account and have a researcher account. Individuals with researcher accounts can collaborate with others by adding them as a contributor to a Project within the Hub.

Individual user profiles are not visible. 

Accounts and basic information are visible on the Local Contexts Registry. By default, researcher accounts are not visible in the registry, but can be made visible in your researcher account settings. Within the registry, contact information is not visible to the public or registered Hub users.  

Contact information added to Projects and Labels will be visible wherever those Projects and Labels are accessed, which can be limited based on the Project visibility settings and where the Labels have been applied.

For more, see our Privacy Policy.

The settings on your My Profile page is where you can update your personal information, such as your name, email, affiliations, and password. Administrators of a community or institution account, or the creator of a researcher account, can click on Settings in an account to update that account’s settings, such as the account description, image, and main contact.

Previous versions of customized Labels are available on each Label page, accessed on the Labels tab of your community account.

Existing Labels can be added to the Hub by following the “How to customize Labels” process on the Working with Labels page. Please reach out to the Local Contexts team at support@localcontexts.org if you need any assistance adding existing Labels.

TK and BC Labels can be applied through Projects on the Hub. To add existing applied Labels to the Hub, members of community accounts can create a Project on the Project page of their account. After creating the Project, you can use the “Apply Labels” action on the Project page.

You may wish to review the requirements for displaying Notices in our Labels Style and Usage Guide. For more information about how to use the Hub to generate Notices, see our Getting Started on the Hub guide.

The TK, BC, and Attribution Incomplete Notices are generated through Projects on the Hub. To add existing Notices to the Hub, members of institution and researcher accounts can create a Project on the Project page of their account.

To add an existing Open to Collaborate Notice, go to the Notices tab in your account and click “Add Link” on the Open to Collaborate Notice.

You may wish to review the requirements for displaying Notices in our Labels Style and Usage Guide. For more information about how to use the Hub to generate Notices, see our Getting Started on the Hub guide.

Projects can be edited by the Project creator. While the complete information about a Project will not be available, a record of when edits were made is accessible to Project contributors on the Project page under Project Activity. If you wish to retain a record of a Project before editing, you can download the Project PDF under Project Actions.

Yes. You can see all public Projects on the Projects Board. You can also see each account’s public Projects on their page in the Registry. Public Projects can also be shared outside the Hub through its link.

Community accounts can select the “No Labels Pending” status when the community is not interested in applying a Label. This decision could be for many reasons and should be respected as the community’s sovereign right.

The soft launch of Version One (v1) of the Local Contexts Hub was released in October 2021. Our developers release regular updates to the Hub with major version updates planned for the future. For more about these updates, see our changelog, blog, maintenance schedule, and subscribe to our newsletter. Thank you for your interest, feedback, contributions, and patience as we continue to refine the Hub  to make it as useful and effective as possible.

A RESTful API (or application programming interface) allows two computers to communicate with each other over the internet. In order to gather the information from the Local Contexts Hub to publish on your site, a request needs to be made through the API. Once a request has been made, the API then sends the corresponding data to your site instantly.

For more information, visit our API Implementation Guide.

Unique IDs are assigned to Labels and Projects created in the Hub. Notices are not assigned a unique ID.

To find the unique ID for a Label, go to that Label page in your community account. The 32-character string at the end of the URL is the Label’s unique ID.

To find the unique ID for a Project, look for the Local Contexts Project ID on the Project page. For more information about Local Contexts Project IDs, see our API guide.

An API Implementation Guide is available on the Local Contexts website. Documentation on the Hub’s API can also be found on the API GitHub page. 

If you are interested in integrating Local Contexts into a CMS, DAMS, database, or similar as the system’s developer, please contact the Local Contexts team and consider joining our online Technical Implementation Working Group. 

If you are interested in integrating Local Contexts into an instance of a CMS, DAMS, database, or similar as a user, your next steps will depend on your ability to customize your system. In the case of proprietary systems, you may need to be in touch with the system’s developer. For systems that you can customize, the API Implementation Guide will be a good starting place and we recommend joining the Technical Implementation Working Group.

Currently, there are no API keys required to access the Local Contexts Hub API.