A query...

[Claire Bowern]

> Solutions to this kind of thing include peer-review (I believe that
> it fails a lot, but it is still vital), making data available, and
> replication of results. In today's fieldwork, for example, I would
> like to see every fieldworker (with appropriate permissions from
> native speakers, governments, etc.) make their data available
> on-line, field notes, sound files, etc. To do this, future grants
> would need to have funds for digitization of data and storage of
> data, following guidelines that are now becoming standard in the
> field.


Dear all,
Three points on why I don't think this is a blanket good idea:

. Some grant organisations don't allow data processing as a grant 
expense. ELDP grants, for example, do not allow funds to be disbursed 
for things like paying someone to get files ready for digital archiving 
or metadata documentation, so I have to do it. That obviously puts a 
limit on what can be done. And of course, web-storage and archiving 
aren't the same thing, and both need doing.

. Applying for such funds would put the grant totals through the roof. 
Not only are linguistics grants usually smaller than physics grants, 
etc, the pool of available money is much smaller. If more people apply 
for bigger grants which include a large digitization component (on top 
of other expenses) we're soon going to have to choose between recording 
the last speakers of undescribed language Xish and putting materials of 
Yish on the web.

. Such work is incredibly time-consuming, even when the materials are 
recorded digitally in the first place. To put it bluntly - I can't spend 
time creating a Bardi online digital archive, even assuming I got 
speakers' permission (which I don't think they'd give), because a) it 
would take time away from doing things that the Bardi community can 
access; b) it would hurt my tenure chances, because it would take time 
away from doing work that counts in tenure cases (and I already spend as 
much time as I think is wise on point (a)); c) I have a heap of things 
that I want to write about on the language, and I'd rather do that than 
let someone else do it because I've spent my time making data available. 
After all, that sort of work is the main reason I'm an academic linguist.

Even the "permissions" aspect Dan mentions is not a minor issue. How do 
you get informed consent for putting language materials on the web from 
people who've never used a computer?

I'm not trying to be a wet blanket, just wanting to urge some caution.

Claire

-----------------
Dr Claire Bowern
Department of Linguistics
Rice University