Linguistic Archives and Language Communities Questionnaire

Abstract

Digital language archives hold vast amounts of materials in endangered or marginalised languages. However, due to limitations in technical infrastructure and the design of these archives, the materials are usually not easily accessible to speakers of the languages represented or their descendants. With the goal to establish best practices for researchers archiving linguistic data, this paper presents a questionnaire designed to assess how archival materials can be made more readily available to language communities.

Evaluation and analysis of digital language archives development platforms: a parametric approach

“…A digital repository, such as DSpace or CKAN, can work as a warehouse of digital language contents, such as text, pictures, audio and video, where these materials can be systematically ingested, stored, managed, preserved and reused (Narayanan, 2020). Archives are proven to be the custodians of human civilisation’s socio-cultural heritage and the keepers of ethnicity (Sarkar and Biswas, 2020) and, hence, LIS professionals can collaborate with endangered language communities, linguists and endangered language researchers to build digital language archives (Burke, 2021; Khait et al , 2021; Rodriguez and Vann, 2021). The use of ACMSs like ArchivesSpace will make their jobs easier and give them a systematic workflow for content creation, storage, preservation and distribution (Sarkar and Biswas, 2020).…”