2.2 Getting to Know your Archivist and Archive

To get a feel for the information you need to note down about each item in your growing collection, it will be useful to look at collections in the language archive where you will be depositing your materials. Here we give examples of the archiving process with the CoRSAL archive. These steps will vary between archives. If archiving with CoRSAL, it will be useful to contact the CoRSAL team to discuss with them your plans. Here are some questions you might ask:

  • Is CoRSAL able to accept your data for deposit?
  • Could the CoRSAL archivist review relevant requirements for metadata and data formats?
  • Does CoRSAL charge any fees?
  • (If you are applying for funding) could CoRSAL send a support letter to be included in your grant application?

Here is some information you should have ready to share with the archivist if you are going to ask for a letter of support for a funding agency:

  • The project title and scope
  • The language name(s), including ISO 639-3 code(s) where available
  • Names of primary investigators (PIs), who are the main data collectors (most likely you and anyone else collecting language data with you)
  • The types of data you are planning to deposit (audio, video, text, images, annotations, translation, etc.)
  • The projected timeline of your project
  • Any data management plans you have, such as specific file types you will be using (.eaf, .flextext, .wav)
  • Any access to permission or rights concerns that need to be considered. We will cover this in more detail on the next page.

The CoRSAL team is here to support you in your data management and archiving goals.  Make sure to ask what that support includes.  For example, this course has many practical sections on data annotation.  Do you need help with that aspect of data analysis?  Ask when the next training sessions are, and if you can get help with preparing your project.  You can contact the team through an email to corsalunt@gmail.com.

References

Kung, Susan Smythe. 2016-08-19. Finding an archive for your (endangered) language research data. Linguistic Society of America, CELP Blog. https://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/finding-archive-your-endangered-language-research-data