Info: ELRA, LDC, and AFNLP/Oriental-COCOSDA announce the opening of ISLRN Portal

[Thierry Hamon]

Date: Thu, 03 Apr 2014 12:17:49 +0200
From: ELRA ELDA Information <info at elda.org>
Message-ID: <533D354D.5000902 at elda.org>
X-url: http://www.islrn.org/

/Press Release - Immediate - Paris, France, April 3, 2014/

*Opening of the ISLRN Portal*
*ELRA, LDC, and AFNLP/Oriental-COCOSDA announce the opening of the ISLRN
Portal @ www.islrn.org.*

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
(www.islrn.org). 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.

_Overview_
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 Verhoeff algorithm
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verhoeff_algorithm>.

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.

The functionalities that can be accessed by Visitors are:

- Identify a language resource according to its ISLRN 
  http://www.islrn.org/resources/identify_islrn
- Identify an ISLRN by the name of a language resource 
  http://www.islrn.org/resources/identify_name
- Get information about ISLRN http://www.islrn.org/about, FAQ
  http://www.islrn.org/faq, Basic Metadata
  http://www.islrn.org/basic_metadata, Legal Information
  http://www.islrn.org/legal_info
- View last 5 accepted resources ("What's new" block on home page
  http://www.islrn.org/)
- Sign up to become a provider

The functionalities that can be accessed by Providers, once they have
signed up, are:

- Log in http://www.islrn.org/login/?next=/login/
- Request an ISLRN according to the metadata of a given resource 
  http://www.islrn.org/login/?next=/resources/submit_resource/
- Request to become a certified provider so as to import XML files
  containing metadata
- Import one or more metadata descriptions in XML to request ISLRN(s)
  (only for certified providers)
- Edit pending requests
- Access previous requests
- Contact a Moderator or an Administrator
- Edit Providers' own profile

ISLRN request is handled by moderators within 5 working days.  

*Contact: islrn at elda.org*

_Background_
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.

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.

********************************************************************
About ELRA
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 www.elra.info.

About LDC
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 www.ldc.upenn.edu.

About AFNLP
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 www.afnlp.org.

About Oriental-COCOSDA
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: www.cocosda.org