[Ads-l] An appeal for DARE

[Joan H. Hall]

Allan Metcalf has just published an eloquent appeal for assistance for DARE:

http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2015/04/06/requiem-for-a-dictionary-or-life-support/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

It's our hope that we can not only continue adding new entries to DARE 
and improving existing ones, but that we can also complete some ongoing 
projects:

1) Creating the API for DARE so that developers can make apps utilizing 
its wide-ranging materials (imagine an app for doctors, defining the 
thousands of regional and folk names for ailments and diseases; an app 
for regional foods; one for travelers in each region of the country; one 
for bird-watchers, with all of our regional and folk names for birds; 
one for writers who want their characters to use appropriate regional 
words and phrases; one for makers of word games, etc.).


2) "Bleeping" the personal or confidential information in our collection 
of 1,843 audio recordings made between 1965 and 1970 so that they can 
all be posted on the UW-Madison's Digital Collections Center website. 
(We are more than halfway through the project, which is being done by 
graduate Project Assistants and undergraduate interns.)

3) Posting short segments of audio recordings from each state in the 
"English Dialects" segment of this site:

http://csumc.wisc.edu/AmericanLanguages/index.htm

4) Posting results of our Online Survey of Wisconsin English here:

http://dare.wisc.edu/surveys/OSWE-maps

The audio recordings have been (and are being) used in many studies of 
regional pronunciation and analyses of sound change over the last half 
century. If you are interested in using any of them before they are all 
freely available, please let me know and I can give you access.

Joan

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org