data base

[Claire Bowern]

Hi Tammy,
In general, the more complex databases will do a better job, but if
they are so complex that the relevant people can't use them easily,
they do no good at all. If your main concern is making sure that the
pieces of paper are all recorded in one place, I'd go with something
simple, like an excel spreadsheet or a word document. For a
spreadsheet, you could have columns like "date", "name of
elder/speaker", "phrase in Dakotah", "English translation", "person
writing down the phrase", and "note". That would put all the phrases
in one place and you can back up the file, print it out for people,
sort it by English or Dakotah, etc. Evernote will also let you make
files like this (you could have one file for things to do with the
home, one for plants, one for animals, etc). The main thing with Excel
and Word, etc, is that when Microsoft releases a new version of the
software, it sometimes doesn't read earlier versions of the files. So
it's a very good idea to save the file from time to time in another
format.
Let us know what you decide!
Claire

On Mon, Jan 14, 2013 at 8:49 AM, Tammy DeCoteau <tdc.aaia at verizon.net> wrote:
> Claire,
>
> Thank you for your suggestion for a simpler database.  I did try two of the
> suggestions, and yes, they appear to be more difficult than I had
> anticipated.
>
> My goal is to archive the materials in some way, and without the necessary
> knowledge of what type of verb a word is, using some of the data basis seems
> daunting.  We are not linguists, simply Native American people working to
> save our languages in whatever way we can.
>
> Tammy DeCoteau
> AAIA Native Language Program
>
> Jan 13, 2013 12:49:45 PM, ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU wrote:
>
> 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 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