Sorting Language Archives Out: Digitization and Its Consequences

Abstract

Growing awareness of possibilities created by digital technologies coupled with an increasing concern about endangered languages has led to a wide variety of language revitalization, preservation, and documentation projects. Information professionals, who have played a surprisingly small role in these activities, need to cultivate a greater understanding of the specific needs of groups engaged in digital language projects in order to mediate between digital repositories and users. A review of the data from a field study of an endangered indigenous Thai sign language, Ban Khor Sign, serves as a limit example of the complexity of the documentary interventions grouped under the rubric of “language archive.” The language archive problem demands a total information solution involving informaticists, archivists and museologists, and librarians.

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