[Lingtyp] Concerns about U.S. policies and linguistic archives

[Jocelyn Aznar]

Dear colleagues,

I know this list is primarily meant for discussing ideas and 
observations related to linguistic typology, rather than politics. 
However, current U.S. policies regarding scientific data have led me to 
wonder whether these policies might affect the fields of linguistics and 
humanities.

When I heard about data related to ecology and the environment being 
discarded, I immediately worried the same could happen to linguistic 
archives and datasets. But maybe it is just me, dear colleagues working 
in the US, what do you think? Could this happen as well to archives 
related to linguistics and humanities?

I believe that if we address this issue proactively, we’ll be better 
placed to preserve more data should the need arise. For instance, we 
could check whether the existing infrastructure outside of the US, ELAR, 
HumaNum/Ortolang, Pangloss, Paradisec, etc, would be able to handle or 
help to face such a crisis? or whether we should consider setting up 
some sort of emergency server so that researchers can transfer data at 
risk of being lost?

One possible strategy would be to prepare a brief manual (probably as a 
webpage), after discussing with each institution of course, describing 
which archives outside the U.S. could accept data from an archive from 
the US, in which format, what kind of data would be accepted, etc. Then, 
if needed, U.S based researchers could formulate a plan to safeguard 
their data. By doing that, we could also identify gaps in current 
coverage and, if necessary, establish an emergency archive or server to 
fill those gaps.

Best regards,
Jocelyn Aznar

¹ I’m of course also concerned about data from other fields, though I 
feel more competent discussing linguistic data. Still, if we build an 
infrastructure for linguistic data from the U.S., it might be possible 
to scale it up for other disciplines as well.