How to organize your materials and data for a language archive

Susan Smythe Kung

Ryan Sullivant

Alicia Niwagaba

Vera Ferreira

This course will teach students about the management, organization, and curation that they can do during and after their data collection to prepare their language materials (both born-digital and analog) for deposit into a language archive. Selected discussion themes include the following: Strategies for managing both born-digital and analog data (incl., the importance of collecting metadata simultaneously with the data, and file-naming strategies for encoding metadata); Who would use my collection, and how? (Expected users: language communities, academic researchers versus less expected users: genealogists, historians, artists, musicians, the curious public); What archives can and cannot do for you (e.g., digital preservation versus digital presentation; which kinds of files are suitable for archiving); Making collection guides and finding aids (incl., the importance of collection guides using examples from physical and digital archives; what to include when creating collection guides); and Strategies for managing access to sensitive data (incl., access restriction techniques at various language archives and managing access in perpetuity).