archiving

The Endangered Languages and Dictionaries Project at the University of Cambridge investigates ways of writing dictionaries that better facilitate the maintenance and revitalization of endangered languages. It explores the relationship between documenting a language and sustaining it, and entails collaboration with linguists, dictionary-makers and educators, as well as members of endangered-language communities themselves, in order to determine what lexicographic methodologies work particularly well pedagogically for language maintenance and revitalization.

it is my pleasure to announce the Language Description Heritage (LDH) open access digital library, available online at

http://ldh.livingsources.org

The LDH is being compiled at the Max Planck Society in Germany, specifically at the MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig in cooperation with the Max Planck Digital Library in Munich.

A lot of digital ink has been spilled in recent years laying out standards and best practices for language documentation and archiving, and rightly so. Coherent standards greatly improve the usefulness and longevity of archived data, and getting standards right is a difficult process. And, measures like the recent LSA resolution and the requirements of funding agencies are an important step towards getting researchers to use these standards.

At the recently concluded Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) in Baltimore, the following resolution on Data Sharing was passed by those at the Business Meeting. It will soon be sent along to the whole membership of the Society for their vote. The resolution was put forth by the LSA's Technology Advisory Committee.

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