2007 LSA tutorial

[Jeff Good]

Hi Heidi,

Thanks for getting this started!

One thing that strikes me as a potential gap looking at that schedule  
is any talk/talks which demonstrate what you can do with all those  
nice texts you made--it's very future/archive-centric. I know there's  
no great "now, I want to search my texts" tool, but maybe we could  
have a talk illustrating what you can do with these nice texts/ 
databases and how you can do it. Maybe something about how program X  
makes an XML to whatever transform nice?

Maybe this is unrealistic--that is, the tools aren't out there. But,  
I think it would be nice to show people that the payoff for all this  
work isn't only that warm fuzzy feeling that the future will be able  
to look at your texts.

Any thoughts?

Jeff

On Mar 14, 2006, at 5:18 PM, Heidi Johnson wrote:

> Dear Outreachers -
>
> It will soon be time to submit a proposal for the OLAC tutorial at the
>
> 2007 LSA meeting. The meeting will be in Anaheim, California, Jan.  
> 4-7.
>
>
>
> Our 2006 tutorial, "A field linguist’s guide to making great audio  
> and video
>
> recordings" was a great success, as we reported earlier this year,  
> probably
>
> because the topics were so practical that lots and lots of people  
> felt they
>
> needed to hear what we had to say. It also helped to bolster our  
> authority in
>
> this area, which is desirable because there are a lot of know-it- 
> alls out there
>
> still recommending vile things like minidiscs :-).
>
>
>
> I would like to suggest that we do the second half of "A field  
> linguist's guide"
>
> in 2007, focussing on the production of texts and databases that  
> are typically
>
> used by linguists to support or produce structured texts, like  
> Shoebox. We have
>
> talked about doing a sort of "Meet the Archives" tutorial, but  
> couldn't we somehow
>
> combine the two, by making sure that "new" archives - or newish  
> members - give
>
> a presentation that introduces their archive and also says  
> something helpful about
>
> making & using & preserving texts?
>
>
>
> I've outlined the essential (in my view) topics for "A field  
> linguist's guide to making
>
> portable, preservable texts and databases" below. What I would  
> really really really
>
> like to see is a tutorial that shows people how to use the software  
> we recommend
>
> in a chain: set up your character set, font, keyboard; transcribe &  
> time-align with
>
> audio/video; annotate and/or interlinearize; database to extract  
> lexical items, etc;
>
> output something that can go into the archive. Most of the programs  
> that people
>
> seem to favor are easy enough to use until you try to figure out  
> how to transfer the
>
> text you're working on from one to the other. That part can be  
> maddeningly frustrating!
>
> I'm hoping we can collectively smooth out the kinks in the  
> pipeline, so to speak,
>
> and present our audience with a truly useable suite of tools.
>
>
>
> So here's a possible outline, using last year's time slots as a guide:
>
>
>
> 1. 12:00–12:30
>
>     Unicode: what is it, how do I find my character, what do I do  
> if my character
>
>     isn't there?
>
> 2. 12:30–1:00
>
>     Fonts and keyboard layouts: setting up your environment so you  
> can type
>
>     your nice Unicode characters in your applications
>
> 3. 1:00–1:30
>
>     Transcription software: esp. inputs and outputs (Transcriber &  
> Elan, mainly?)
>
> 4. 1:30–2:00
>
>     Annotation software: Elan, esp. inputs and outputs
>
> 5. 2:00–2:30
>
>     Interlinearization: Toolbox
>
> 6. 2:30–3:00
>
>     Databases: Toolbox, Excel, esp. saving in XML format
>
>
>
> What do y'all think? Does this sound like something we could/should  
> do?
>
>
>
>
>
> Heidi
>
>