Archiving
David Nathan
Endangered Languages Archive
Hans Rausing Endangered Languages
Project
SOAS, University of London
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Topics
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Introducing ELAR and digital language archives
Preservation
Archive interactions with documentation
What and how to archive
Protocol
Metadata
Evaluation of audio
Archives and revitalisation
Archivism : mobilisation
Video
Conclusions
Introducing ELAR and digital language
archives
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Endangered Languages ARchive (ELAR)
 one of 3 semi-autonomous programs of the
Hans Rausing Endangered Languages
Project
 staff of 3; archivist, software developer,
technician, (research assistants etc)
 develop preservation infrastructure,
cataloguing and dissemination; policies;
facilities; training and advice; materials
development and publishing
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What is a digital language archive?
 a trusted repository created and
maintained by an institution with a
commitment to the long-term preservation
of archived material
 will have policies and processes for
materials acquisition, cataloguing,
preservation, dissemination, migration to
new digital formats
 a collection of managed materials
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What is archiving of language materials?
 preparing materials in a structured form
suitable for long-term preservation
 creating long-term relationships
 it is not backup
 it is not dissemination/publication
 it should not impinge on good linguistic
practice
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What can a language archive offer?
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 Security - keep your electronic materials safe
 Preservation - store your materials for the long
term
 Discovery - help others to find out about your
materials
 Protocols - respect and implement sensitivities,
restrictions
 Sharing - share results of your work, if appropriate
 Acknowledgement - create citable
acknowledgement
 Mobilisation - create usable language materials for
communities
 Quality and standards - advice for assuring your
materials are of the highest quality and robust
standards
Kinds of language archives
 many cross-cutting classifications:
 Indigenous vs outsider, eg. Squamish Nation
 regional vs international, eg. AILLA, Paradisec;
DoBeS, ELAR
 associated with research institute, eg. AIATSIS,
ANLC
 granter-funded, eg. DoBeS, ELAR, OTA
 digital vs physical vs mixed, eg. DoBeS vs
Vienna Sound Archive, ANLC
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Potential users
 speakers and their descendants - up to
95% of users of UCB are community
members
 depositors - to create or renew materials
 other researchers - comparative/historical
linguists, typologists, theoreticians,
anthropologists, historians, musicologists
etc etc
 other “stakeholders”, eg educationalists
 journalists and the wider public
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Archives networks and bodies
 Digital Endangered Languages and
Archives Network (DELAMAN)
 ELAR, DOBES, ANLC, Paradisec, EMELD,
LACITO, AIATSIS, AMPM (Maori)
 Open Language Archives Community
(OLAC)
 others, eg. D-LIB
 http://www.dlib.org/
 Open Archives Initiative
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Digital archive architectures
 OAIS archives define three types of
‘packages’
ingestion, archive, dissemination:
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dfa dfadf
fds fdafds
Producers
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Ingestion
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dfa dfadf
fds fdafds
fds fdafds
Archive
Dissemination
Designated
communities
‘Live Archives’ - architecture
 Boundary between depositors, users and
archive:
 users add, update content; customise outputs
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fds fdafds
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Producers
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Ingestion
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dfa dfadf
dfa dfadf
fds fdafds
fds fdafds
Archive
Dissemination
Designated
communities
The way we were ...
 eg 1993: ASEDA Aboriginal Studies
Electronic Data Archive at AIATSIS
Canberra (modelled on Oxford Text
Archive)
 opportunistically collect and catalogue
electronic materials that were at risk or not
accessible
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lexica
grammars
texts
etc
How things have changed ..
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types of data (modalities and some genres)
means of storage
standardisation and metadata
dissemination
(most explosive) expanded into practice
and workflow of linguists
ELAR’s holdings
 ELAR currently holds about 45 deposits
with a total volume of approx 1.1 TB.
 the average deposit is about 25 GB,
however, the sizes vary widely, with a few
much larger deposits. The median size is
around 10GB
 we expect volume to nearly double over
the next year
 see next slides for distribution of data types
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ELAR holdings by data type
 data types for a
representative sample
(70%) of holdings
 data type by volume
(MB) and number of
files, sorted by
volume
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Data type
Volume
(MB)
Files
audio
360,411
6,312
video
208,995
895
image
28,592
2,221
msword
223
404
pdf
196
134
eaf
33
176
text
32
781
lex
9
29
trs
5
246
xls
1
19
imdi
1
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If you are a depositor, ELAR will
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preserve your deposited materials
provide for making changes where possible
provide web-based metadata management
implement your access restrictions etc
give feedback about materials
provide advice, general and specific
assistance, eg data conversion
provide some equipment and services
on a case by case basis, develop
resources
Preservation
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Preservation issues
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making materials robust
making storage robust
organisational, ownership and policy issues
changing technologies
 refreshing
 migrating
Changing technologies
 advantages of digital preservation
 primarily: copying
 items no longer unique
 also transmission, dissemination
 other implications
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robust formats (standard, open, explicit)
formats with long horizons
formats easy to refresh
formats that don’t require particular software
(sometimes software is intrinsic!)
 may have to describe software or even archive
the software
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Two preservation models
 “preserve the bytestream”
 keep the exact original at all costs
 LOCKSS
 “lots of copies keep stuff safe”
 http://lockss.stanford.edu/
 guess which community it came from!
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Some backup issues
 risk management
 undetected problems and useless backups
 aspects of professional backup:
 scheduled frequencies, eg monthly, weekly,
daily
 retention
 media and locations
 naming/versions
 proven restoration
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Top 10 worst ways to collect/manage data
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1. No backup
2. Divergent versions of same data
3. Unlabeled disks/media
4. Non-standard or undocumented filenames
5. Master recordings used to review/analyse data
6. Don’t know how characters are encoded
7. Never tried to convert/export data
8. Unprocessed or unedited audio and video
9. Inconsistent recording
10. Unmonitored recording
Archive interactions with documentation
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Documenter and archive interactions
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grant formulation and application
communications, questions, advice
training
archiving services
Documenter & archive interactions
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Query/interaction topics
 analysis of approx 150 queries from
documenters/linguists over nearly 2 years
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What and how to archive
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What can you archive (at ELAR)?
 media - sound, video
 graphics - images, scans
 text - fieldnotes, grammars, description,
analysis
 structured data - aligned and annotated
transcriptions, databases, lexica
 metadata - structured, standardised
contextual information about the materials
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Archive objects
 informed by traditions, eg document archives
 sometimes called “resources”, bundles
 it could be a file, a set of files, a directory, a
“session” or a coherent item with many parts
 should have archival qualities eg Bird & Simons
“7 Dimensions” (or see Thieberger in LDD2)
 may impose standard structures or formats
 need deposit event and processes
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legal and protocol
verification
accession
ongoing processes
Archive objects should be selected
 example: video: How much volume
allocated?
 answer: ...
 however, e.g.:
 unlikely that linguist is in position to plan and
consistently create excellent video, so selection
is unavoidable
 data has always been selected!
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(... selection)
 in your typical work you also:
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selected
labeled
transformed/processed/edited
added, corrected, expanded
made links
made or assumed relationships between
“whole” and processed units; invented labels,
IDs, scope etc
 imposed formats
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Data portability
 Bird and Simons 2003:
(for language documentation) our data
should have integrity, flexibility, longevity
and utility
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Data portability
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complete
explicit
documented
preservable
transferable
accessible
adaptable
not technology-specific
(also appropriate, accurate, useful etc!!)
Formats - media - preferred
 sound - WAV
 image - BMP, TIFF, JPEG
 video - MPEG2
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Formats - documents - preferred
 plain text, with or without markup
 PDF (PDF/A)
 XML, other systematic markup (with description of
markup system)
 well-structured documents in common Office
formats - ELAR will eventually convert them to
archive formats
 character encoding :
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 preferred encoding is ASCII or Unicode
 clearly document any other encodings used, e.g. ISO
8859-5
 discuss with us if you use font substitution to handle nonRoman characters
Formats - characters - preferred
 character encoding :
 ASCII or Unicode (UTF-8)
 you must clearly document any other encodings
used, e.g. ISO 8859-9
 discuss with us if you use font substitution to
handle non-Roman characters
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Filenames and directories
 characters [A-Z], [a-z], [0-9], underscore
and a single full stop before the extension
 correct MIME extension
 favour lower case letters
 maximum length 30 characters
 maximum directory depth 8
 = ASCII only, no spaces
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Semantics of filenames
 don’t stuff meaningful information into
filenames - use metadata instead
 versions
 use directory structures wisely
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Data format duty cycle examples
Raw
Video
DVI
Interchange
Archive
Dissemination
softwarespecific
MPEG-2
MPEG-2
MPEG2, AVI, QT
Fieldnotes Shoebox
Shoebox
FOSF
XML
WWW, print
dictionary
Audio
ATRAC
WAV
WAV
BWF
MP3
Complex
data
multiple
FM Pro
database
RTF, XML
XML
Interactive
application
Multimodal
multiple
multiple
as above
as above
Multimedia
application
page
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Working
Evaluation and conversion examples
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Characters
 did my characters come
through?
 answer: ...
há pa ki hená mázaska
 however:
 perhaps ELAR
should do it?
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wikcémna nú pa iyóphewa-ye ks t DBW
wóz?az?a-s?ni yeló DB OK
wash things-NEG ASS.M
'he didn't do the wash'
wóz az a-s ni yeló DB OK
wash things-NEG ASS.M
'he didn't do the wash'
Preservation
 Is my file preservable?
 Note:
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characters?
inconsistent segmentation
Text transcription: “Korimáka”
data as comments
Language: Choguita Rarámuri
used for transcription: Spanish
conventions/metadata Language
Consultant: Luz Elena León Ramírez
Linguist: abriela Cabaero
Transcription: erth Fuen & Gabrela Cabaero
Date recorded: 11/02/2006
Date tranbscribed: 11/02/2006
Recording: rec6-LEL.wav
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Knowledge representation 1 - before
wama momol chi naron mon chayako (LB) / wama momol chi naron chayako
(MD)
wama momol chi nan mon chayako (more emphatic(LB) / wama momol chi nan
chayako (MD)
Why don't you and him do it?
+ Notes have both of these sentences without the negator mon.
OK runon naynangkroy ile ri
He ate their sago.
* kipin kannangkroy ngolu
intended: We ate their cassowary.
OK kipin kanangkroy ngolu
We ate their cassowary.
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Knowledge representation 1 - after
<sentence.set num="75">
* kipin kannangkroy ngolu
<version>
intended: We ate their cassowary.
<walman>Kipin kannangkroy ngolu</walman>
<judgement>*</judgement>
OK kipin kanangkroy ngolu
</version>
We ate their cassowary.
<english>We ate their cassowary. </english>
</sentence.set>
<sentence.set num="76">
<version>
<walman>Kipin kanangkroy ngolu</walman>
<judgement>OK</judgement>
</version>
<english>We ate their cassowary.</english>
</sentence.set>
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Knowledge representation 2
 avoid generic software “convert to XML”
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<?xml version=“1.0” encoding=“UTF-8”?>
<FMPXMLRESULT xmlns=“http://www.filemaker.com/fmpxmlresult”>
<PRODUCT BUILD=“06/26/2002” NAME=“FileMaker Pro” VERSION=“6.0v2”/>
<DATABASE DATEFORMAT=“M/d/yyyy” LAYOUT=““ NAME=“Videos”
RECORDS=“13” TIMEFORMAT=“h:mm:ss a”/>
<METADATA>
<FIELD EMPTYOK=“YES” MAXREPEAT=“1” NAME=“Index name” TYPE=“TEXT”/>
<FIELD EMPTYOK=“YES” MAXREPEAT=“1” NAME=“Image desc” TYPE=“TEXT”/>
<FIELD EMPTYOK=“YES” MAXREPEAT=“1” NAME=“Date” TYPE=“TEXT”/>
<FIELD EMPTYOK=“YES” MAXREPEAT=“1” NAME=“Content” TYPE=“TEXT”/>
</METADATA>
<RESULTSET FOUND=“13”>
<ROW MODID=“16” RECORDID=“40”>
<COL><DATA>Morly Beeta</DATA></COL>
<COL><DATA>Interview with Morly Beeta</DATA></COL>
<COL><DATA>Jan/13/05</DATA></COL>
<COL><DATA>Obu history by Morly Beeta</DATA></COL>
</ROW>
ELAR conversion - original
Language
Dialects
Speakers
Place recorded
Date recorded
Recording name
Duration
Recorded by
Recording equipment
Translated by
Transcribed by
Reviewed and corrected by
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Unangam Tunuu [Aleut Language]
Qawalangin [Eastern Aleut]
Nii}u}i{ [Western Aleut]
Maria Turnpaugh, Nick Lekanoff, Clara Golodoff
Unalaska, AK. Ray Hudson Room, Unalaska Public Library.
7.21.04
UNAK2trk1
16:21 min.
Alice Taff
Marantz CDR 300 recorder with one flat filtered table-mounted cardiod
microphone. Also audio/video miniDV - Canon GL2.
Alice Taff with Maria Turnpaugh 000-493sec. Millie Prokopeuff 455-499sec.
Alice Taff
Moses Dirks
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ET
Kamagala, afternoon
afternoon
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CG
Aang
yes
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ET
Sla{chxisaada{, ii? Nice weather.
nice weather
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CG
Yeah. Maku{
that's all right
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ET
Alqutaadaltxichin? How are you?
How are you all?
ELAR conversion - XHTML
<?xml version=“1.0” encoding=“UTF-8”?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN”
“http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd”>
<html xmlns=“http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml” xml:lang=“en” lang=“en”>
<head><title>ANC14trk1</title>
<link href=“taff.css” type=“text/css” rel=“stylesheet”></link></head><body>
<table class=“metadata”>
<tr><td>Language</td><td class=“language”>Unangax̌ (Aleut)</td></tr>
<tr><td>Dialect</td><td class=“dialect”>Niiĝuĝix̌ (Western Aleut)</td></tr>
<tr><td>Speakers</td><td class=“speaker”>Alice Petrivelli, Vera Snigaroff, Mary Snigaroff, Vivian
Koenig</td></tr>
<tr><td>Place recorded</td><td class=“place”>Anchorage, Alaska </td></tr>
<tr><td>Date recorded</td><td class=“date”>Mar. 15, 2005</td></tr>
<tr><td>Recording name</td><td class=“rec_name”>ANC14trk1</td></tr>
<tr><td>Recorded by</td><td class=“rec_by”>Alice Taff, Piama Oleyer</td></tr>
<tr><td>Recording equipment</td><td class=“rec_equip”>Marantz CDR300 CD recorder with one flatfiltered, table-mounted cardioid microphone. </td></tr>
<tr><td>Translated/Transcribed by</td><td>Simeon L. Snigaroff, December 2005</td></tr>
</table>
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ELAR conversion - XHTML
<table class=“transcript”>
<tr><td class=“time”>1</td><td class=“speaker”>ap</td><td class=“transcription”>Uqlaĝiix̌, x̌aayax̌,
uqlaĝil agach aliguutax̌ ax̌.</td></tr>
<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td class=“translation”>To take a bath, Steam bath, to take a
bath is the one that is Aleut</td></tr>
<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
<tr><td class=“time”>5</td><td class=“speaker”>vs</td><td class=“transcription”>uhmm</td></tr>
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ELAR conversion - in browser
Language
Dialect
Speakers
Place recorded
Date recorded
Recording name
Recorded by
Recording equipment
Translated/Transcribed by
1 ap
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Unangax̌ (Aleut)
Niiĝuĝix̌ (Western Aleut)
Alice Petrivelli, Vera Snigaroff, Mary
Snigaroff, Vivian Koenig
Anchorage, Alaska
Mar. 15, 2005
ANC14trk1
Alice Taff, Piama Oleyer
Marantz CDR300 CD recorder with
one flat-filtered, table-mounted
cardioid microphone.
Simeon L. Snigaroff, December 2005
Uqlaĝiix̌, x̌aayax̌, uqlaĝil agach aliguutax̌ ax̌.
To take a bath, Steam bath, to take a bath is the one that is Aleut
Delivery of materials
 mostly we expect to receive copies on
computer-readable media such as hard disks
or CD/DVD
 DVDs seem consistently unreliable
 some digitisation of media may be possible
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Protocol
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Protocol
 sensitivities, restrictions: identification,
description and implementation
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Protocol grows naturally with documentation
 focus on recorded data » more people, more
genres, less researcher knowledge
 focus on revitalisation » which language to teach?
who to host and teach? who can learn? etc
 community participation » framework for speakers
to shape documentation process and products
 mobilisation » selecting, juxtaposing; community
participation
 time » significance and sensitivities change over
time
 access » increasing scope for dissemination,
control of IP
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ELAR Deposit Form “Section C”
 ELAR pays careful attention to any
sensitivities or restrictions that apply to any
part of your deposit. There are four ways
that Access Protocol is implemented:
 you define permissions for the whole deposit or
for individual files (or parts of files)
 we provide defaults to protect your data if you
do not define permissions
 you/we keep permissions up to date
 you list other rights holders
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ELAR Deposit Form “Section C”
P1. Anyone

Any person may view/listen to or receive a digital copy of any part of the deposit
P2. Certain people or groups
Choose any combination of P2A, P2B, and P2C:
P2A Research community members
What level of access (choose one only)?
P2A1. They can receive a digital copy of requested material

P2A2. They can view/listen but cannot receive a digital copy

P2B. Language community members
See below regarding identifying members
What level of access (choose one only)?
P2B1. They can receive a digital copy of requested material

P2B2. They can view/listen but cannot receive a digital copy

P2C. Particular named people or bodies

See below regarding identifying people/bodies
P3. Depositor is asked permission for each request
You will be contacted and asked for permission on each request.
How do you want to be contacted?
P3A. Requester is given address to contact you directly

P3B. ELAR will relay requests to you
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P4. Only the depositor has access

Persons other than the depositor will not be able to request access.
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ELAR Deposit Form “Section C”
Identifying people/bodies
If you chose P2B or P2C, tell us how ELAR should determine who is a
member of a group (e.g. language community, educational body). Choose
one of the following:
M1. You tell ELAR how to determine membership (tell us in Part D) 
M2. ELAR will ask you on each occasion

M3. ELAR will make a judgement about membership

If you chose P2C, then list the names of the people or bodies in Part D.
Contacting you
If you choose P3A or P3B, you will be able to decide about each particular
request. If the choice is P3A, we will send your address to the requester, who
can then ask you directly for permission. You then send us your decision. If
the choice is P3B, ELAR will act as an intermediary, and pass on the request
to you, so that your privacy is maintained. However, if you chose one of P3A
or P3B and you (or your delegate) are not contactable, ELAR will need to
make the decision or change the access permissions.
Similarly, if we need to contact you to ask about group membership, and you
(or your delegate) are not contactable, we will need to make the decision or
change the access permissions.
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Other
 deposit, file or object-level protocol
 depositor-oriented
 we will provide means to change/manage
protocol
 delegate
 other rights holders
 sunset clause
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Metadata
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Metadata
 Metadata
 the data about data that enables the
management, identification, retrieval and
understanding of that data
 reflects the knowledge and practice of
data providers
 defines and constrains audiences and
usages for data
 documentation’s data orientation heightens
the importance of metadata
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Metadata
 ELAR metadata set =
 selection from IMDI*, OLAC*, EAD, TEI
 ELAR-specific (e.g. protocol, geographical)
 depositor metadata
* ie. a set of metadata elements that maps onto both IMDI and OLAC
{ {
Archive
Deposit
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ELAR metadata set
Your metadata
All other files
Types of metadata
 depositor's / delegates' details
 descriptive metadata
 administrative metadata
 preservation metadata
 access protocols
 metadata for individual files
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Depositors and delegates
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name
address
contact details (telephone, fax, email, URL)
role
affiliation
date of birth
nationality
Descriptive metadata
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title, description, subject, summary
keywords
subject Language, Community
location
time span
Administrative metadata
 project details
 funding and hosting institutions
 details of external copies
 modifications and status
 details of accession agreement
 cf. deposit form
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Preservation metadata
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carrier media
formats, size
provenance (source)
access
 access protocols (see elsewhere)
 group membership identification
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File-level metadata
 media files
 duration, file size
 MIME type, content type
 text files
 font, character set, encoding
 format, markup
 metadata files
 schema
 scope
 validity
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Metadata formats
 common or standard:
 IMDI (‘ISLE Metdata Initiative’, from DoBeS)
 OLAC (Open Language Archives Community)
 EAD, and others
 ELAR: has created its own set, currently in
implementation
 deposit-scope metadata in deposit form
 file level metadata (will be) by web form
 also, depositor’s own metadata
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Metadata formats
 each depositor can also have different
metadata!
 our goal: to maximise the amount and
quality of metadata
 quality and extent is more important than
standards and comparability
 many depositors are sending extensive
metadata in a variety of formats including
spreadsheets - see examples
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What’s missing from metadata?
 pedagogy has typically been left out of the
documentation agenda
 linguists are better at problematising
languages than teaching them
 we should mobilise informed, effective and
accountable pedagogy
 a Hippocratic imperative
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Relationships
 relationships between documenters/
documentation and pedagogy
 nonexistent/poor cousin
 by-product
 documentation is a vector of language
transmission!
72
Who could be documenters?









73
community members
audio recordists
videographers (documentary filmmakers)
educators
ethnobotanists
anthropologists
computer experts
activists, missionaries
linguists
Multipurpose documentation?




linguists of various specialisations
anthropologists, historians, botanists ...
do any have priority?
who are documentation’s main
beneficiaries?
 can we tell?
74
... yes ...
 Metadata
 the data about data that enables the
management, identification, retrieval and
understanding of that data
 reflects the knowledge and practice of
data providers
 defines and constrains audiences and
usages for data
75
The key is metadata
 examples: IMDI, tiered morphological
glossing etc
 standard (or “best practice”) metadata is
strongly oriented to descriptive linguistics
and typology (“aggregators”)
 How could metadata serve pedagogy?
76
Pedagogically oriented metadata

demarcation, names and descriptions of
socially/culturally relevant events such as songs
(great interest to community members, and
valuable teaching materials)
should enormous amounts of time be spent providing
morpheme-by-morpheme glosses if we cannot simply
retrieve a song?


77
phenomena that provide learning domains, such
as “numbers”, “kinship”, “greetings”, “tense”
socially important phenomena such as register,
code switching
Pedagogically oriented metadata
 notes on learner levels
 links to associated materials that have
explanations, examples
 notes on the previous selection and use of
material for teaching
 notes on how to use the material for teaching
 notes and warnings about restricted materials or
materials which are inappropriate for young or
certain classes of people (e.g. profane, archaic etc)
 and of course easily findable basic information
such as name of language or variety, speaker,
gender, speaker’s country etc
78
Evaluating audio
79
Dobbin
 software for audio evaluation, processing
and reporting
80
Dobbin
81
Dobbin
82
Dobbin
83
Dobbin
84
Dobbin
85
Dobbin
86
Archives and revitalisation
87
Keeping ‘means of transmission’ alive
 Romaine: co-ordinated efforts at
revitalisation mean that institutions
increasingly become the vector of
language transmission, cf intergenerational
transmission (Fishman)
 at the limit, documentations, and archives
that foster, preserve, and disseminate
them, become the means of transmission
88
Archives and revitalisation
 Penfield: toward a theory of documentation




collaborative efforts
onsite training
document for revitalisation
community-based protocols for the use of
materials
 these have implications for the lifecycle of
‘data’
89
Archivism
90
What have we missed?
 Woodbury: most developments are "what's been
happening around the emergence of a
documentary linguistics", particularly technology,
which has raised expectations more than changed
practices
91
What have we missed?
 Contact with wisdom and
experience of established
fields e.g.
 radio/broadcasting (eg mics,
MD)
 cinematography (eg quality
and specialisation)
 journalism (eg equipment
handling)
 audio archives (linguists had
input to IASA before 80s
or so)
92
What did we get?
 advice about formats, parameters, what to
avoid
 'silver bullet' equipment and formats
 fundamentalism and format wars
93
Archivism
 Archivism: capitulation of language documenters
to the agenda and priorities of archives and
information technology
 why did this happen?
 for historical reasons
 rapid changes in technology
 we left a vacuum
94
Mobilisation
95
Mobilisation
 use of documentation resources to make
relevant, useful, effective resources for
language support and revitalisation
96
Gamilaraay/Yuwaalaraay song player
 uses ‘familiar’ data such as from Shoebox,
Transcriber
 adds genre, functionalities, design etc
97
Song player data
98
<?xml version="1.0"
encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<!DOCTYPE Trans SYSTEM
"trans-14.dtd">
<Trans scribe="elar"
filename="YugalTrack33"
version="1"
version_date="050608">
<Episode>
<Section type="report"
startTime="0"
endTime="87.445">
<Turn startTime="0"
endTime="87.445">
<Sync time="0"/>
\newsong14 [track33] music
<Sync time="2.588"/>
verse 1 line1
<Sync time="5.619"/>
verse 1 line2
<Sync time="8.339"/>
Song player data
\song 34 [track28]
\ti Gugan gaaynggul /Brown-skin baby
\co Words and music: (c) Bob Randall
\s Roger Knox
\ln Gamilaraay
\verse1
Dhayndalmuu ngaya dhurriyawaanhi
dhayndalmuu ngaya dhurriya-y -waa-y -nhi
priest
I
ride,
-moving -Past
s20148
m1590 m721
-m1733 -m1699
As a preacher I used to ride
Yarraamanda
binaal
yarraaman -ga
binaal
horse
-in,at,on peaceful
m2020
-m755
m244
A quiet horse on the plains.
99
Walaaybaaga
walaay -baa
-ga
nhama
nhama
that,the
m1686
wagibaaga.
wagibaa -ga
plain
-in,at,on
s20467
-m755
gamila ngaya muurr gigi
gamila ngaya muurr gi-gi
-gi
Song player data
 Chunking data:
 verses etc: [2,4,6,8,10,12,14,16,18,20,22,24]
 labels: [1:"Verse 1", 3:"Chorus", 4:"Verse 2",
6:"Chorus", 7:"Verse 3", 9:"Chorus", 10:"Verse
4", 12:"Chorus"]
Play it
100
Other examples of ‘mobilisation’
 Simple or conventional games etc can take
on new significance
 Memory game play
 Crossword play
101
Video in documentation and archiving
 “Questioning the role of video in
language documentation & archiving:
is a moving picture worth 1,000 texts?”
102
The rise and rise of video
 increase in claims about video
 rise from about 25% to 75% of ELDP
applicants
 funders have been demanding that some
applicants make video
103
One size fits all?
 Himmelmann:
the core of a language documentation, then, is
constituted by a comprehensive and
representative sample of communicative events
as natural as possible. Given the holistic view
of linguistic behaviour, the ideal recording
device is video recording.
104
Goals and methodology of documentation
 cultural and cognitive aspects can be documented
or augmented by video (examples from Harrison)
 counting methods/systems
 locative expressions
 behaviours or appearances of plants animals etc that are
described as part of language-encoded knowledge:
• information about plant toxicity and preparation could
usefully be video
• swimming formations (eg Marovo people of Solomon
Islands who have rich set of terms for fish behaviour and its
relationships to the calendar and hunting)
• Gila Pima (Arizona) name a plum tree "dog's testicles", and
an edible banana "looks like an erection" (umm, what will
the videos show?)
However, David Crystal estimates that such
culturally/environmentally specific aspects are only about 10%
of any languages’ content
105
Goals and methodology of documentation
 discourse and genre
 distinguishing participants (McConvell)
 transparently capturing “stories” (Wittenburg)
 adding or enhancing methodology




stimulus materials
the camera adds theatricality (Jukes)
the camera as a participant (Atkins)
enhance transcription through motivating community
participation
 sign language work
 treat video as inscription
 cameras, lighting, orientation, clothing etc
 appreciated by communities
106
Goals and methodology of documentation
 documentation can’t aim to capture everything
(Austin)
 and the video camera cannot either!
 argument for accountability has caused confusion
between events and recordings. Result: fantasy
that video is what happened and provides
empirical evidence for all kinds of claims
 argument:
 video can do X => we should do video
 fails without goals and methodology for X
 many pro-video arguments could be equally
applied to capturing other phenomena:
 e.g. palatography
 collecting other text-based metadata eg on social setting
107
Goals and methodology of documentation
 there must be different methodologies
(linguistic AND video) for different purposes
(cf. sign)
 Himmelmann:
[each potential discipline’s usages] influence the
recording and presentation of the data
inasmuch as certain kinds of information are
indispensable for a given analytical procedure
(no phonetic analysis is possible without some
high-quality sound recording, no analysis of
gestures is possible without videotaping, etc.)
108
Goals and methodology of documentation
 so if there are distinct methodologies for
different purposes
 how adequate could a generic video be?
 how can video serve purposes that
documenters don’t have?
109
Goals and methodology of documentation
 explicit claimed purposes for video:
 in ELDP applications, many applicants request
funds for video equipment but have no videorelated documentation goals
and
 video exponents describe the potential of video
but few documenters actually have these goals
110
Goals and methodology of documentation
 many phenomena can't be represented on
video:
111
 complex family structures and their
terminologies
 changes in moon shape and phase (better as
still photos or diagrams); other calendric and
geographic expressions
 time and distance eg Tofa (Siberia) have words
for the distance you can cover in a day on
reindeer back
 morphological, grammatical and most lexical
information
 (also relationships, staging, motivations,
histories...)
Video: a community oriented technology
 video is good for:





community oriented content
community involvement
members will best know what/how to shoot
skills transfer
creating directly usable materials, including for
revitalisation
 why should a linguist shoot video at all?
112
Video workflow and workload
a disorder of magnitudes ...
 skills, workload, intrusion, volumes - all
increase by orders of magnitude

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113
skills - equipment, shooting, editing, production
equipment - choice, usage, maintenance
power supplies
capturing, conversion
annotation
editing, production
data volumes
Workflow and workload
 annotation:
 could easily involve a time ratio of up to 100 (1
hour of video may take100 hours to process)
 in practice, most documenters do not annotate
the phenomena that they did (or didn’t) identify
 fallacy that annotation etc can be done later
• video amplifies the value of event-participant
knowledge
114
Video: conclusions
 video can:
 add to the representational methods used by
linguistics
 encourage us to look at diverse phenomena
 challenge our methodologies
 provide new and effective ways of
disseminating language and cultural events and
knowledge
115
Video: conclusions
 video and multimedia
 little encouragement to produce multimedia
 multimedia:
• distinguishes medium from mode of
knowledge representation
• richer and more explicit interleaving of
various types of knowledge
• imposes its costs in more appropriate areas
116
Video: conclusions
 generic, amateur video fails to respect
participants by not recognising linguistic
specialisation, complexity or expertise to
the same degree as “real” linguistic work
 naive video achieves “authenticity” mainly
by not editing (and thereby not producing
usable products!)
117
Video: conclusions
 there is a lot of tradition in evaluating the
descriptive value of linguistic work, but little
in defining the documentation value of
video
 if video really represents the claimed range
of linguistic phenomena, it is a key mode of
documentation: documenters (and their
teachers) need to pay much closer
attention to its methodologies!
 it is not clear that it is linguists who should
be making video
118
Conclusions
119
Conclusion: we ask depositors to






manage materials well
collect and provide protocol information
deliver materials, metadata
send trial samples etc
not withhold materials
share/manage/delegate custodianship of
materials
 maintain relationships with language
stakeholders and ELAR
120
Conclusion
 digital language archives combine
traditional preservation with new ways of
supporting creators and users of materials
 an archive can be more effective if
materials are prepared as “portable”
 ultimately it is up to documenters to define
what good documentation is
 ELAR welcomes you to discuss your
archiving goals
121