Language Documentation and Archiving: a Work in Progress

1. Language Documentation and Archiving:a Work in Progress David Nathan Endangered Languages Archive Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project SOAS, University of London

2. Language documentation and archiving • a fickle relationship • early documenters (e.g Franz Boas) had preservation in mind • modern documentation places archiving as indispensible

3. The way we were ... 1993 • 1993. The Aboriginal Studies Electronic Data Archive (ASEDA) was launched on gopher by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.

4. The way we were ... ASEDA • received and catalogue electronic materials that were at risk • lexica • grammars • texts • received on floppy disks, backed up using MO disks (later, CD)

5. The way we were ... ASEDA • a web edition appeared in 1994, part of Coombsweb at ANU, the 5th website in Australia • (and on the same server, the first ever web dictionary in 1995)

7. How things have changed since 1993 • types of data (modalities and genres) • now predominantly media/documentation • storage methods • now “professional”, mass data systems • standardisation and metadata • now standards for data and metadata • dissemination • now web-based dissemination • expanded influence into practice and workflow of linguists

8. documentary dog archiving tail X The way we were … 2004 documentation = description + x x = ? technology, archiving (metadata, standardisation …)

11. Back to basics? • we are finally moving away from formats to what to express • knowledge structures eg semantically organised grammars • context, interpretation • and restoring curatorial roles • curation as an explicit, indispensible, creative, value-adding, component

12. Social not search? • up until 2003 humans created 5 exabytes of data (five billion gigabytes). We now create that much every day. • we increasingly want to find what we need via our people networks, not a company’s algorithm • if language documentation turns out as successful as we hope, then organising around language codes won’t be the way to go!

15. Polarities • a ‘language resource’ approach or participatory approach? • do we aim to make it easier or make it richer? • are archivists data ‘shepherds’ or the partners in preservation and promotion? • are archivists automatons or artisans? • are depositors, users and speakers them or us?

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