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There are two fundamental facts about programming languages: there are lots of them; all but a handful are never used beyond the immediate circle of friends of the inventor. An exhaustive survey of all languages used over the past twenty years in Western Europe and the US would be time‐consuming and of questionable utility; however, it seems safe to suggest that the number is considerably in excess of 1,000. Sammet's latest annual survey lists 132 languages currently in use in the United States, and this can only be a minor fraction of those that have been constructed at one time or another.

In this chapter, I offer a critique of linguistic field methodology, exploring the contribution that a participant-driven approach to data collection can make to language documentation and description. Bringing together material from linguistic field manuals, project documentation, hand-written field notes, and reflexive accounts of my field experiences, I trace my journey into the field, and through the process of collecting language data for the eventual production of a grammatical description. I establish that the basic field methodology advocated by linguists has traditionally involved tightly structured interviewing (known as “elicitation”). At the same time, I point to a literature in which this methodology is critiqued. While experienced fieldworkers no doubt employ multiple methodologies in the field, novice fieldworkers are encouraged to focus on their research goals. This can mean that elicitation sessions typically become the only way in which fieldwork is carried out.Drawing on my own experiences in the field, I demonstrate that linguistic fieldwork can combine ethnographic participation/observation methodology with community-driven text collection, and context-rich techniques of elicitation. This layered methodology prioritises people and social participation over the goals of academic research. It allows the research record to be shaped by the community, thus permitting the researcher to experience and seek understandings of the symbolic system of language from the perspective of the community. In my experience, such a methodology enhances the sustainability of the field project from both community and researcher perspectives. Crucially, it creates a context in which it is more likely that the linguist will be invited to return to the field and contribute in an ongoing way to a community, on their terms.

This paper aims to explore a model of digital language archiving based on a collaboration between under-resourced indigenous communities and an institutional library. The model’s effectiveness is assessed in creating resources and digital language archives to support speaker communities and language documentation programmes for endangered and lesser-known languages in India.

The model of SiDHELA, the first indigenous language archive developed in India at Sikkim University by the Centre for Endangered Languages in collaboration with the Central Library, is described.

This study finds that localised repositories developed in collaboration with institutional libraries work as a more effective and accessible resource centre for indigenous communities, rather than the centralised data stores that collate all language data, which is the dominant method of language documentation in the world.

It is the authors’ belief that the active role of libraries in language documentation and preservation of indigenous knowledge will open future gateways for language revitalization for under-resourced languages of the world.

SiDHELA is a novel attempt at localised digital language archiving in collaboration with indigenous communities of Sikkim and the North Bengal region of India.

This paper reports on the first 20 years of the Open Language Archives Community (OLAC), comprehensive infrastructure for indexing and discovering language resources.

We begin with the original vision, assess progress relative to the original requirements, and identify ongoing challenges.

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.

This paper examines the progress of OLAC and discusses improvements in such areas as participation, access, and sustainability.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the role of linguistic legacy materials within archives and databases. These data of past documentation projects are currently playing a minor role in the design of modern language archives. This is due to various challenges that legacy materials pose – ethical considerations, difficulties with formats, unclear or deficient metadata. Tackling these challenges can highlight general issues in language documentation and the use of language data. These insights can be used to inform the design of tools and infrastructures for data in this field, both recent and legacy materials.

This paper is conceptual and theorises digital language archives through their oldest deposits. It is informed by the author’s experiences in working with linguistic legacy materials of the South Estonian Kraasna dialect. The discussion makes references to relevant discourses in linguistics, archiving and computer science, encouraging transdisciplinary efforts in the design of language archives.

A digital archive created around linguistic legacy materials has the potential to respond to challenges posed by current data.

This paper discusses digital language archives from the perspective of documentary linguistics. It introduces the challenges and necessary steps in curating legacy materials. Several suggestions for the design of digital archives arise from this discussion. These ideas can inspire creators of digital language archives and provide a view from researchers using legacy materials.

This paper aims to develop a system, which would enable efficient management and exploitation of documentation in electronic form, related to mining projects, with information retrieval and information extraction (IE) features, using various language resources and natural language processing.

The system is designed to integrate textual, lexical, semantic and terminological resources, enabling advanced document search and extraction of information. These resources are integrated with a set of Web services and applications, for different user profiles and use-cases.

The use of the system is illustrated by examples demonstrating keyword search supported by Web query expansion services, search based on regular expressions, corpus search based on local grammars, followed by extraction of information based on this search and finally, search with lexical masks using domain and semantic markers.

The presented system is the first software solution for implementation of human language technology in management of documentation from the mining engineering domain, but it is also applicable to other engineering and non-engineering domains. The system is independent of the type of alphabet (Cyrillic and Latin), which makes it applicable to other languages of the Balkan region related to Serbian, and its support for morphological dictionaries can be applied in most morphologically complex languages, such as Slavic languages. Significant search improvements and the efficiency of IE are based on semantic networks and terminology dictionaries, with the support of local grammars.

In approaching the problem of languages—of how they affect communications in general and documentation in particular—there is a strong temptation to draw an analogy with the wheelbarrow (but with apologies to the wheelbarrow, which did in fact represent an advanced development in the evolution of transport). Language is nothing more than the wheelbarrow stage in communications, and there the matter has rested. We must remember, when we are discussing languages, that we are merely making the best of a primitive development which, sooner or later, will have to be superseded if it is not to choke further human advance. The flood of information or plague of print which we hear so much about is only felt as such because of the antiquated vehicle we continue to employ for handling it. To illustrate, if we were still restricted to wheelbarrows for manhandling all the goods of the world we should now be talking about the plague of commodities instead of the shortage of freights.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the level enterprise language is articulated within programme level documentation, and then, using EntreComp (Bacigalupo et al., 2016) as a framework, investigate the extent by which curricula is underpinned by enterprise competencies.

This study adopted a qualitative approach firstly through a desk analysis of undergraduate programme documentation across one UK University (n=60), followed by face-to-face interviews with programme leaders (n=25).

Findings revealed a lack of reference to enterprise in programme documentation as well as a confusion of the language associated with enterprise and entrepreneurship. However, all participants in the study were able to articulate opportunities afforded to students within the programme to practise entrepreneurial competencies from the EntreComp framework.

Whilst the limitation of this study is that it has been carried out in just one university, the practical implication of these findings provide supporting evidence that the EntreComp framework can be used to build a whole programme approach to embedding enterprise. This remains to be tested in future research. As the EntreComp framework is relatively new, then this piece of research is original as it is amongst the first to report on the framework.

Information technology is a new interdisciplinary field combining information science, computing, telecommunications and electronics. As it establishes links across national and linguistic boundaries it also acquires a multilingual dimension requiring translators as links in the interlingual communication process. The translator thus can no longer be considered in isolation; he is simply another mediator, generally between natural languages, similar in function to information scientists who mediate between natural and artificial languages, be they documentation languages or command languages to access databases, and similar also to those computational linguists who mediate between natural languages and computer languages. Interlingual communication is expanding and its means and methods are changing. This is not only reflected in two major Aslib Conferences on this topic in two years, but in Action Plans of the Commission of the EC, the activities of INFOTERM in Vienna, ISO, FID, and UNESCO involvement in this work, the growth of terminological data banks, as well as new organizations and studies in every developed country, some of which were mentioned during this conference.

The purpose of this paper is to prepare data that can be used as a base for establishing best practices for making archival linguistic materials available for (re-)use by members of language communities.

To assess how archival materials can be made more readily available to marginalized language communities, the authors use a questionnaire targeted at their members and, to a lesser extent, outsider researchers worldwide.

The collected data shows certain peculiar – and likely new – tendencies that are vital for finding practical approaches to data access. Importantly, the language communities in question have decent internet access, mainly via mobiles phones and smartphones. They are actively present in social networks and commonly use messengers.

This study has several biases. It pre-depends on internet access and is based upon a relatively small group of respondents fluent in English, Russian, Spanish or French. Besides these, not all questions were apparently understood as intended.

To enable better access of marginalized language communities to archived language materials, it seems meaningful to recommend developing mobile-friendly infrastructure, possibly integrated into popular platforms.

To the best the authors’ knowledge, the question of access to archived linguistic materials by language community members globally, as well as their connectivity and communication habits, was not the subject of previous research with the means of survey data.