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<i>Press Release - Immediate - Paris, France, April 3, 2014</i><br>
<br>
<div align="center"><b>Opening of the ISLRN Portal</b><br>
<b>ELRA, LDC, and AFNLP/Oriental-COCOSDA announce the opening of
the ISLRN Portal @ <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.islrn.org">www.islrn.org</a>.</b><br>
</div>
<br>
Further to the establishment of the International Standard Language
Resource Number (ISLRN) as a unique and universal identification
schema for Language Resources on November 18, 2013, ELRA, LDC and
AFNLP/Oriental-COCOSDA now announce the opening of the ISLRN Portal
(<a href="www.islrn.org">www.islrn.org</a>). As a service free of
charge for all Language Resource providers and under the supervision
of a steering committee composed of representatives of participating
organisations, the ISLRN Portal provides unique identifiers using a
standardised nomenclature.<br>
<br>
<u>Overview</u><br>
The 13-digit ISLRN format is: XXX-XXX-XXX-XXX-X. It can be allocated
to any Language Resource; its composition is neutral and does not
include any semantics in reference to the type or nature of the
Language Resource. The ISLRN is a randomly created number with a
check digit that validates a <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verhoeff_algorithm">Verhoeff
algorithm</a>.<br>
<br>
Two types of external players may interact with the ISLRN Portal:
Visitors and Providers. Visitors may browse the web site and search
for the ISLRN of a given Language Resource by its name or by its
number if it exists. Providers are registered and own credentials.
They can request a new ISLRN for a given Language Resource. A
provider has the possibility to become certified, after moderation,
in order to be able to import metadata in XML format.<br>
<br>
The functionalities that can be accessed by Visitors are:<br>
<br>
- <a href="http://www.islrn.org/resources/identify_islrn">
Identify a language resource according to its ISLRN</a><br>
- <a href="http://www.islrn.org/resources/identify_name">Identify
an ISLRN by the name of a language resource</a><br>
- Get information about <a
href="http://www.islrn.org/about">ISLRN</a>, <a
href="http://www.islrn.org/faq">FAQ</a>, <a
href="http://www.islrn.org/basic_metadata">Basic Metadata</a>, <a
href="http://www.islrn.org/legal_info">Legal Information</a><br>
- View last 5 accepted resources (“What’s new” block on <a
href="http://www.islrn.org/">home page</a>)<br>
- Sign up to become a provider<br>
<br>
The functionalities that can be accessed by Providers, once they
have signed up, are:<br>
<br>
- <a href="http://www.islrn.org/login/?next=/login/"> Log in</a><br>
- <a
href="http://www.islrn.org/login/?next=/resources/submit_resource/">Request
an ISLRN according to the metadata of a given resource</a><br>
- Request to become a certified provider so as to import
XML files containing metadata<br>
- Import one or more metadata descriptions in XML to
request ISLRN(s) (only for certified providers)<br>
- Edit pending requests<br>
- Access previous requests<br>
- Contact a Moderator or an Administrator<br>
- Edit Providers’ own profile<br>
<br>
ISLRN request is handled by moderators within 5 working days.<br>
<b>Contact: <a href="islrn@elda.org">islrn@elda.org</a></b><br>
<br>
<u>Background</u><br>
The International Standard Language Resource Number (ISLRN) is a
unique and universal identification schema for Language Resources
which provides Language Resources with unique identifier using a
standardised nomenclature. It also ensures that Language Resources
are correctly identified, and consequently, recognised with proper
references for their usage in applications in R&D projects,
products evaluation and benchmark as well as in documents and
scientific papers. Moreover, it is a major step in the
interconnected world that Human Language Technologies (HLT) has
become: unique resources must be identified as they are and
meta-catalogues need a common identification format to manage data
correctly.<br>
<br>
The ISLRN does not intend to replace local and specific identifiers,
it is not meant to be a legal deposit, not an obligation, but rather
an essential and best practice. For instance a resource that is
distributed by several data centres will still have the “local”
data-centre identifier but will have a unique ISLRN.<br>
<br>
********************************************************************<br>
About ELRA<br>
The European Language Resources Association (ELRA) is a non-profit
making organisation founded by the European Commission in 1995, with
the mission of providing a clearing house for language resources and
promoting Human Language Technologies (HLT). To find out more about
ELRA, please visit <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.elra.info">www.elra.info</a>.<br>
<br>
About LDC<br>
Founded in 1992, the Linguistic Data Consortium (LDC) is an open
consortium of universities, companies and government research
laboratories. It creates, collects and distributes speech and text
databases, lexicons, and other resources for research and
development purposes. The University of Pennsylvania is the LDC's
host institution. To find out more about LDC, please visit
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.ldc.upenn.edu">www.ldc.upenn.edu</a>.<br>
<br>
About AFNLP<br>
The mission of the Asian Federation of Natural Language Processing
(AFNLP) is to promote and enhance R&D relating to the
computational analysis and the automatic processing of all languages
of importance to the Asian region by assisting and supporting
like-minded organizations and institutions through information
sharing, conference organization, research and publication
co-ordination, and other forms of support. To find out more about
AFNLP, please visit <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.afnlp.org">www.afnlp.org</a>.<br>
<br>
About Oriental-COCOSDA<br>
The International Committee for the Co-ordination and
Standardisation of Speech Databases and Assesment Techniques,
Oriental-COCOSDA, has been established to encourage and promote
international interaction and cooperation in the foundation areas of
Spoken Language Processing, especially for Speech Input/Output. To
find out more about Oriental-COCOSDA, please visit our web site:
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.cocosda.org">www.cocosda.org</a>
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