data base

[Claire Bowern]

Hi Tammy,
I have a few suggestions in addition to what the others have said.
Sorry I'm a bit late to this conversation.

. evernote.com. If the people in your office don't like setting up
computer programs, the suggestions people have made here might be a
bit fiddly to get running. Evernote is very simple. It's just a set of
text files that you can sync over several computers. You have
"notebooks" that you can store things in. I have a notebook for my
work notes, one for recipes, one for things I need to do at home, etc.
It's a great way to keep lots of things in one place. It's free for
under 60mb a month. Searching within evernote is very easy and it's
all text files so it's easy to export. You can also store audio,
video, pdfs, photos, etc in the same program.
. wesay.org Some people use this for dictionaries. I haven't used it
myself but they have a web site with examples.
. lexiquepro.com is for dictionaries. It could probably also be used
to store phrases and sentences too.
. If you want to make your own database with its own fields, filemaker
or access are the main ones. That's probably overkill for what you
need though.

Claire

On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 4:03 PM, Tammy DeCoteau <tdc.aaia at verizon.net> wrote:
> Mitakuyapi (My relatives),
>
> In the ten years our language program has been operating we have amassed
> several files of different words and phrases in our language.  Many of these
> words that are not in the missionary dictionaries we commonly use and none
> of the phrases are in dictionaries.  We have saved every scrap of paper on
> which something in our language was written down.
>
> Sometimes, one of the elders will rush into our office on Monday morning,
> blurt out a phrase in Dakotah and tell us what it means in English.  That
> means to me that over the weekend, the elder thought of something that
> hadn't been said and wanted us to save it.  So many of these are written on
> post-in-notes or on the back of another sheet of paper and all are saved in
> what we call, "Word and Phrases, Volume I, Words and Phrases, Volume II,"
> etc.
>
> Because of funding issues our language program's future is uncertain.  I
> want to take care of cataloging these words and phrases so that we can place
> a copy in our archives in Princeton for future use.
>
> Does anyone know of any database that is already created where we could
> easily catalog these?
>
> Tammy DeCoteau
> AAIA Native Language Program