(with corrections from Ed Garrett, 2011-09-22)
In April this year I wrote a post called “Who uses digital language archives?”. This post is a short update on the current situation for the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR) at the School of Oriental and African Studies.
ELAR was established in 2005 as part of the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project (HRELP) and started providing online access to its collection of endangered language materials in June 2010. Currently it has 110 archived collections (comprising 200,000 files amounting to around 10 Terabytes of material). There are now 45 collections available for browsing online, comprising 7,400 data bundles, of which 4,200 (57%) have unrestricted access to registered users.
The number of registered users currently stands at 500 400, up 66% 33% from the figure I quoted in April. Users are very active, and the ELAR website receives around 230,000 “hits” annually. Interestingly, the user profile has been changing recently with an increasing number being community members, including Aleut (Canada), Tai-Ahom, Wadar (India), Burushaski (Pakistan), Serrano, Cahuilla, Arapaho (USA), Iraqi Jewish (Iraq), Saami (Finland), Wabena (Tanzania), Torwali (Pakistan), Hani, Bai (China), and Irish. One user recently commented: “I found your site while looking up my grandmother, and I found her on your site speaking our language. and i would love for my children her great grandchildren to hear our language coming from her”.
Registered users also include many interdisciplinary researchers, particularly archivists and anthropologists, along with linguists. If you would like to become a registered user simply complete this web form, agree to the Terms and Conditions of Use, and apply.
Note: Many thanks to David Nathan, Director of ELAR, for providing the information on which this post is based, and to Ed Garrett for correcting the data on user numbers.
Follow
Here at Endangered Languages and Cultures, we fully welcome your opinion, questions and comments on any post, and all posts will have an active comments form. However if you have never commented before, your comment may take some time before it is approved. Subsequent comments from you should appear immediately.
We will not edit any comments unless asked to, or unless there have been html coding errors, broken links, or formatting errors. We still reserve the right to censor any comment that the administrators deem to be unnecessarily derogatory or offensive, libellous or unhelpful, and we have an active spam filter that may reject your comment if it contains too many links or otherwise fits the description of spam. If this happens erroneously, email the author of the post and let them know. And note that given the huge amount of spam that all WordPress blogs receive on a daily basis (hundreds) it is not possible to sift through them all and find the ham.
In addition to the above, we ask that you please observe the Gricean maxims:*Be relevant: That is, stay reasonably on topic.
*Be truthful: This goes without saying; don’t give us any nonsense.
*Be concise: Say as much as you need to without being unnecessarily long-winded.
*Be perspicuous: This last one needs no explanation.
We permit comments and trackbacks on our articles. Anyone may comment. Comments are subject to moderation, filtering, spell checking, editing, and removal without cause or justification.
All comments are reviewed by comment spamming software and by the site administrators and may be removed without cause at any time. All information provided is volunteered by you. Any website address provided in the URL will be linked to from your name, if you wish to include such information. We do not collect and save information provided when commenting such as email address and will not use this information except where indicated. This site and its representatives will not be held responsible for errors in any comment submissions.
Again, we repeat: We reserve all rights of refusal and deletion of any and all comments and trackbacks.