The Open Language Archives Community: a 20-year update
ISSN: 0264-0473
Article publication date: 23 November 2022
Issue publication date: 29 November 2022
Abstract
Purpose
This paper reports on the first 20 years of the Open Language Archives Community (OLAC), comprehensive infrastructure for indexing and discovering language resources.
Design/methodology/approach
We begin with the original vision, assess progress relative to the original requirements, and identify ongoing challenges.
Findings
Based on the overview of OLAC history and recent developments and on the analysis of the situation in the language archives area as a whole, the authors propose an agenda for a more sustainable future for open language archiving.
Originality/value
This paper examines the progress of OLAC and discusses improvements in such areas as participation, access, and sustainability.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the financial support of the US National Science Foundation during the early days of OLAC. The authors are grateful to Mark Liberman and Christopher Cieri at the Linguistic Data Consortium, and to Martha Brogan and Lauris Olson at the University of Pennyslvania Library for their support in hosting OLAC infrastructure. The authors are indebted to Helen Dry and Anthony Aristar of the Linguist List, to participants of several OLAC and EMELD workshops and to OLAC’s advisory board and council, for many discussions about the design and operation of OLAC. Special thanks to Haejoong Lee for maintaining OLAC software over many years. The authors are grateful to Nick Thieberger and to anonymous reviewers for feedback on an earlier version of this paper.
Citation
Bird, S. and Simons, G.F. (2022), "The Open Language Archives Community: a 20-year update", The Electronic Library, Vol. 40 No. 5, pp. 507-524. https://doi.org/10.1108/EL-08-2022-0192
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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