Course Description
This is an accelerated course for community language documenters, language revivalists, digital archivists, and linguists interested in the documentation and description of language. It is designed for non-academic documenters or for documentation at a distance and considers the technology needs for these two groups. The course will also be of use to linguistics students working on language documentation and description projects.
In the following nine modules, we provide tutorials on how to take a digital object from creation to archiving. We focus on data management as a means to create a lasting record of community memory, ensure long-term access, and create resources for improved language description.
The Collaborative Language Archiving Curriculum was developed by the Computational Resource for South Asian Languages (CoRSAL) archive. Individuals who authored content are acknowledged in the individual modules to which they contributed. The course is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. The Collaborative Language Archiving Curriculum can be cited as follows:
Computational Resource for South Asian Languages. (2023). Collaborative Language Archiving Curriculum. Retrieved [DD Month YYYY] from https://corsal.unt.edu/curriculum.
Course Summary
Module | Topic | Objectives |
Module 1 | Creating a language collection | To create optimal audio and video recordings To understand what to collect and why To digitize materials |
Module 2 | Facilitating the creation of a regional or community repository | To explore repositories for archiving, find the right fit for you collection To understand legal and ethical considerations for collection of and access to indigenous materials To understand the difference between archiving repositories and websites |
Module 3 | Data management and metadata creation | To find a useful convention for file naming To optimize your foldering for project management To understand item level metadata, especially as relevant to CoRSAL |
Module 4 | Making materials accessible for use | To learn the basics of the SayMore and ELAN software for transcription and translation To learn important considerations for transcription and translation To explore issues of orthographic choice and variation |
Module 5 | Language documentation and description | To use tools of linguistic description to improve language documentation To learn annotation using FLEx |
Module 6 | Preparing files for archiving and collection/archive dissemination |
To understand how to prepare digital data files for archiving
To understand how to create collection landing page
To understand how to create a collection guide
To explore ways archivists can promote their language collections digitally |
Module 7 | Documenting Language Endangerment | To explore possible socio-political issues that impact language endangerment To understand ethical methods of eliciting and archiving traumatic accounts |
Module 8 | Documentation for Health and Wellness | To understand health and wellness as linguistic concepts and the value of documenting these aspects To analyze and apply the use of open-ended qualitative interviews and storytelling To appraise the key ethical concerns that may arise during conversations about health and wellness topics |
Module 9 | Ethnographic data as a part of language documentation | To explore the kinds of ethnographic information that should be collected during language documentation |
Course Modules
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Module 1: Creating a Language Collection
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Module 2: Language Archiving
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Module 3: Data Management and Metadata Creation
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Module 4: Tools of Language Documentation 1
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Module 5: Tools of Language Documentation 2
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Module 6: Preparing Files for Archiving
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Module 7: Documenting Language Endangerment
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Module 8: Documentation for Health and Wellness
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Module 9: Ethnographic Data in Language Documentation