Instructions for Working Groups |
In general |
Once again, we are asking E-MELD Workshop participants to take part in working groups which
will help the E-MELD project fulfill its goals. As those of you who were present at last year's
workshop know, the mandate of the E-MELD project is to promote community consensus about
best practices with regard to the digitization of language documentation. And part of our mission is to develop an educational website designed to explain and illustrate recommended practices, and to facilitate their adoption among linguists and language archivists.
In this context, "best practices" are those which make language documentation as widely available and as enduring as possible. In addition--to accommodate differences in objectives, traditions, and languages of study--"best practices" should be those which allow the individual linguist and archivist as much freedom as possible consistent with long-term data preservation and data interchange. Ideally, we would like to build a site which:
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The design of the website |
With a striking lack of originality, we have called our website the "School of Best Practices in the Digital Documentation of Language" (aka "The School"). It is to be found at:
http://emeld.org/school/. In accordance with the school metaphor, the site now includes the following "rooms":
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Assignments |
This year we would like you to focus on the structure of the existing School and its "rooms." In terms of the objectives sketched above, what part of the site works, what doesn't, and what should be added?
Before the meeting, please review the areas assigned to your workgroup and come to the working group sessions ready to make suggestions. (The URLs to use as starting points are listed with each working group assignment.) We would particularly appreciate it if you would bring suggestions for relevant bibliography to add to the Reading Room and information on software to add to the Tool Room. We will ask the group leaders to assemble a bibliography and software list for us from these suggestions. And, finally, as in past years, will ask each of the group leaders to submit a report 2-3 weeks after the workshop ends, summarizing the opinions and suggestions of their working group. We will use these to improve the site during the following year. We list below each of the working groups, with the areas of the site that we would like them to review. We have assigned all currently registered workshop participants to what we hope is an appropriate working group. In many cases, however, we were unsure of your interests. If you would like to be in a different working group, or if we have missed someone, please let us know at: workshop@linguistlist.org |
1. The Entrance Hall (including Glossary, Credits)/Reading Roomhttp://emeld.org/school/http://emeld.org/school/readingroom/ |
Chair: Jeff Good, U. of Pittsburgh Members: Emily Bender, U. of Washington; Shauna Eggers, U. of Arizona; Jonathan Evans, Academica Sinica; Veronica Grondona, Eastern Michigan U; Ada Kovaci, Indiana U; Paul Kroeber, Indiana U; James Mason, The Rosetta Project & ALL Language Archive; Ron Zacharski, New Mexico State U Liaison: Steve Moran, Eastern Michigan U (steve@linguistlist.org) The "Entrance Hall" is in some ways the most important part of the site. This is the area that introduces best practice, explaining what it is and how it is important. The concept, as we have implemented it, is largely based on the Gary Simons and Steven Bird's article "Seven Dimensions of Portability for Language Documentation and Description" (http://www.language-archives.org/documents/portability.pdf) published in Language in 2003. If you are unfamiliar with the paper, you may want to look at it. We want to know whether the Entrance Hall adequately represents the concepts in the paper. And, of course, we are also interested in any extensions or revisions you feel need to be made to the principles set forth in Bird and Simons, 2003. |
2. The Exhibit Hall/Case Studieshttp://emeld.org/school/exhibits/http://emeld.org/school/case/ |
Chair: Arienne Dwyer, U. of Kansas Members: Laura Buszard-Welcher, Eastern Michigan U; Lyle Campbell, U. of Utah; Östen Dahl, Stockholm U; Naomi Fox, Wayne State U and Linguist List; John Lesko, Saginaw State; Johanna Nichols, U. of California at Berkeley; Udaya Singh, Central Institute of Indian Languages; Wallace Hooper, American Indian Studies Res. Inst. & Indiana U Liaison: Stephanie Stoll, Eastern Michigan U (stephani@linguistlist.org) The "Case-Studies" are intended to aid users in navigating the site and also to motivate them to implement BP by showing what other linguists have done. Because of their importance, we have asked several working groups to look at the Case Studies. The "Exhibit Hall" is also intended to motivate, primarily by offering examples of documentation digitized according to best practices. The languages chosen for this area are intentionally varied, and we have different types of documentation for the different languages. This poses some problems for how the data should be presented; and we solicit your suggestions. |
3. The Classroom (I): Annotation, Unicode/the Work Roomhttp://emeld.org/school/classroom/annotation/http://emeld.org/school/classroom/unicode/ http://emeld.org/school/workroom/ |
Chair: Dafydd Gibbon, Universität Bielefeld Members: Anthony Aristar, Wayne State U; Steven Bird, U. of Melbourne; Zhenwei Chen, Linguist List; Chin-Chuan Cheng, Academica Sinica; Artem Chebotko, Wayne State U; David Harrison, Yale; Will Lewis, CSU Fresno; Donald Salting, North Dakota U; Jozsef Szakos, Providence U. and National DongHua University; Dietmar Zaefferer, Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München Liaison: Megan Zdrojkowski, Eastern Michigan U (megan@linguistlist.org) The Work Room includes some online tools which would benefit from your review, e.g., the FIELD tool for lexical input; the OLAC Repository Editor; and Charwrite (http://emeld.org/tools/charwrite.cfm), a tool for inputting Unicode characters on the web. The Work Room will also house a terminology mapper which references GOLD, an ontology of linguistic concepts developed by the E-MELD team at the U. of Arizona. We would like suggestions about other tools that we could provide on our site, especially tools to facilitate use of the ontology. In addition, we are asking you to review the Unicode and Annotation sections of the Classroom. The Annotation section is particularly in need of additional content; and the Unicode section needs review by experts, since linguists are eager for information on Unicode. |
4. The Classroom (II): Images, Audio, Video, Conversionhttp://emeld.org/school/classroom/audio/http://emeld.org/school/classroom/video/ http://emeld.org/school/classroom/conversion/ |
Chair: Peter Wittenberg, Max Planck Institute Members: Michael Appleby, Eastern Michigan U and Linguist List; Hans-Jörg Bibiko, Max Planck Institute; Yu Deng, Wayne State University; John Lowe, UC Berkeley and The Rosetta Project; Hans Nelson, Brigham Young U; Barbara Need, U. of Chicago; Laurie Poulson, U of Washington; Gary Simons, SIL; Helen Aristar-Dry, Eastern Michigan U Liaison: Susan Hooyenga, Eastern Michigan U (susan@linguistlist.org) This section of the classroom is designed to inform linguists about archiving images and recording and archiving audio material and video files. These are topics about which field linguists are hungry for information; however, helpful information is difficult to find. We are relying on this working group to review the information we have made available: Is it up-to-date? Is it complete? We would like to know what sort of advice you give colleagues who consult you about techniques and equipment for multimedia language documentation. |
5. The Classroom (III): Archiving, Ethics, Metadatahttp://emeld.org/school/classroom/ethics/http://emeld.org/school/classroom/archives/ http://emeld.org/school/classroom/metadata/ |
Chair: Heidi Johnson, Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America Members: Steve Conley, Ohio State U; Ferdinand de Haan, U. of Arizona; Brian Fitzsimmons, U. of Arizona; Ulrike Glavitsch, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology; Joseph Grimes, SIL International and U. of Hawaii at Manoa; Douglas Parks, Indiana U; Kevin Roddy, U. of Hawaii-Manoa; Doug Whalen, Haskins Laboratories Liaison: Sadie Williams, Eastern Michigan U (sadie@linguistlist.org) Writing metadata is an important part of best practice: without metadata a resource is undiscoverable, and an undiscoverable resource is essentially a resource lost. We also want to encourage field linguists to think of themselves as creating a long-lasting collection of important (perhaps irreplaceable) materials and depositing the collection in an established archive. Does the archiving area convey this? Naturally, we also want to encourage respect for intellectual property rights, especially the rights of speaker communities. However, surprisingly little information is available on certain Intellectual Property Right (IPR) issues, no doubt because the legal ramifications have not been explored. We will appreciate any suggestions you can give us for making this area of the site comprehensible, sensible, and helpful. For example, do you know of IPR statements that we could link in as examples? |
6. Classroom (IV): Software, Stylesheets/The Toolroom/Case Studieshttp://emeld.org/school/classroom/stylesheet/http://emeld.org/school/case/ http://emeld.org/school/classroom/software/ http://emeld.org/school/toolroom/ |
Chair: Baden Hughes, U. of Melbourne Members: Ed Garrett, Eastern Michigan U; D. Terence Langendoen, U. of Arizona; Lori Levin, Carnegie Mellon; Mike Maxwell, Linguistic Data Consortium; Manuela Nosky, Microsoft; Steven Shen; Lameen Souag, The Rosetta Project; Ljuba Veselinova, Stockholm U Liaison: Neil Salmond, Eastern Michigan U (neil@linguistlist.org) Most linguists want help choosing software and hardware; and this issue is treated in several sections of the School. The Case Studies, for example, are supposed to provide a snapshot of specific conversion processes and an introduction to the tools used. Thus we have asked this working group to review several of the areas of the site. We are aware that these areas are as yet thinly populated, and we are hoping for your suggestions about content. The "Toolroom" section, in particular, is designed to be an exhaustive listing of useful software, by preference annotated for its uses and failings. It is nowhere near complete, and we hope you will help us flesh it out. |
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In addition to these specific assignments, we welcome any ideas you have about how to improve
the School website, or otherwise fulfill the E-MELD mission. A clear and accessible reference
site on digital language documentation will benefit the whole linguistics community. Any success
we have in constructing one will be attributable primarily to E-MELD Advisors like you, who take
part in the working groups and give us the benefit of your experience.
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