Archiving course at the LSA institute?

[Steven Bird]

I think an LSA course on language archiving would be a great idea.  We
could flesh out the title borrowing from OLAC's vision statement:
"Best current practice for the digital archiving of language resources".

My main concern would be creating the required content.  The required
knowledge isn't concentrated in any one individual.  There's a diverse
range of issues to cover and most of them lack best practice
recommendations, e.g.:

o  collection and curation of audio and video
o  integration with existing field methods
o  rights management, publication citation
o  hardware and software
o  preservation and access
o  legacy data

Where will the content come from?  Someone might object that most of the
above isn't specifically to do with archiving, but I believe our focus
has to be on creating archive-quality documentation in the first place.

--

When Heidi was in Melbourne recently we discussed the components of such
a course, and came up with something like the following:

o  principles - what people should know in order to make informed
   choices concerning available technologies and practices
   (cf Chilin Shih's lecture on digital audio at the
   2003 EMELD workshop in Michigan)

o  recommendations - detailed suggestions concerning the above issues
   (e.g. specific microphones)

o  tools - tutorials on a selection of useful fieldwork software and
   discussion of (in)appropriate use

o  workshop - reports from participants on their own experiences with
   creating and preserving digital language documentation


-Steven Bird