The Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America

1. The Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America Goals and Visions

2. The AILLA Community • Scholars: linguists, anthropologists, educators, botanists… • Speakers of indigenous languages In Latin America • General public, especially indigenous people living abroad.

3. Scholars: access and interests • Access: good, although mostly via telephone connections in Latin America. • Safe preservation of data collections. • Venue for publication of data and early research results. • Research: cross-linguistic/cultural analyses, typology, historical analyses…

4. Speakers: access and interests • Access: ranges from university accounts to Internet cafes in market cities. Many will have little or no access. • Language documentation: dictionaries, grammars, text collections, ethnographies. • Language revitalization: teaching materials for all ages. • Literature and broadcast media; Internet publication.

5. Heritage speakers • Access: ranges from excellent to intermittent. • Typically seeking language and culture materials for their children

6. AILLA’s Future Collection

7. Key Tasks of an Archive • Acquisition • Data management • Long-term preservation • Dissemination • Exploitation of archive resources

8. Acquisition triage • Data from severely endangered languages. • Data stored on obsolete media. • Breadth of coverage. • Support goals of speakers. • Depth of coverage. • Quality of supporting materials.

9. Data management • Diverse resources • Dynamic resources • Standards and interoperability • Data types and formats

10. Diverse Resources • An eclectic collection • Audio, video, text, graphic, photo • From field notes to fully annotated films to virtual art galleries to collections of poems… • Like a library: preserved forever and available to the public. • Unlike a library: creators = publishers, producers and consumers overlap.

11. Dynamic Resources • A volatile collection. • Better to archive unanalyzed data than risk accidental loss. • Archive as a medium for international collaboration. • Depositors can update resources. • Resources may have multiple versions.

12. Standards and interoperability • We must have interoperable metadata and file formats to serve our users. • AILLA has adopted the IMDI standard for metadata, with local customizations. • IMDI & OLAC will maintain mappings so AILLA will be compliant with the global community. • What we still need: standards for packaging multi-media language resources - bundles.

13. Data types and formats • Audio: .wav and .mp3, with 1-minute mp3 samples of long works (> 10 mins) • Text: .pdf and the original format. • Future: • Some kind of standard markup for texts? • Some kind of neutral yet live text format? • 2-minute chunks of .wav files? • Video, photo, graphic, etc, etc, etc…

14. Preservation • Long-term preservation is a requirement: it’s our primary mission! • As long as there is a library at the University of Texas at Austin, AILLA’s resources will be preserved.

15. Dissemination • Also a primary requirement of the archive: wide dissemination of resources. • Internet best serves this requirement. • Everything must be available online: metadata, metadata editors, upload/download resources, information… • Issue: ensuring backwards compatibility, efficient functioning on old browsers, slow computers, and telephone connections. • Everything must also be available offline, on CDs sent by mail.

16. Accessibility vs. protection • Vast majority of AILLA’s collection will be public access, no restrictions. • Graded access system controls access to sensitive materials: • Level 2: automatic controls, e.g. passwords • Level 3: depositor control, by permission only. • Level 4: speaker control, by permission only. • HOWEVER: Not publishing data is also a potential infringement of speakers’ right to access their own languages’ resources!

17. Usability • AILLA’s users include people who • Speak Spanish as a second language, and do not speak English; • Have little or no prior computer experience; • May have very little formal education; • Probably do not speak academese. • Mission: Interfaces must use clear, ordinary language, not jargon, and everything must be offered in Spanish as well as English.

18. Exploitation of resources • Viewers, annotation tools, analysis tools… • Anything that helps users achieve their goals using archive resources. • Short term plan: scour the net for free software and provide links, guides, reviews, etc. from AILLA’s web site. • Long term plan: seek agreements to localize all that fine software to Spanish.

19. Conclusion • The long range vision: • An nice fat endowment, to support and develop the archive, and offer grants to speakers working on their languages. • Every last scrap of information ever created about the indigenous languages of Latin America, with all the necessary tools. • An academic culture that requires archiving of data. • A reputation among indigenous people as a full-service support site for their goals and visions for their languages.