1. 1 David Nathan Endangered Languages Archive Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project SOAS, University of London Language Documentation and Archiving: a Work in Progress

2. 2 Language documentation and archiving  a fickle relationship  early documenters (e.g Franz Boas) had preservation in mind  modern documentation places archiving as indispensible

3. 3 The way we were... 1993  1993. The Aboriginal Studies Electronic Data Archive (ASEDA) was launched on gopher by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.

4. 4 The way we were... ASEDA  received and catalogue electronic materials that were at risk  lexica  grammars  texts  received on floppy disks, backed up using MO disks (later, CD)

5. 5 The way we were... ASEDA  a web edition appeared in 1994, part of Coombsweb at ANU, the 5 th website in Australia  (and on the same server, the first ever web dictionary in 1995)

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7. 7 How things have changed since 1993  types of data (modalities and genres)  now predominantly media/documentation  storage methods  now “professional”, mass data systems  standardisation and metadata  now standards for data and metadata  dissemination  now web-based dissemination  expanded influence into practice and workflow of linguists

8. 8 The way we were … 2004 documentation = description + x x = ? technology, archiving (metadata, standardisation …) documentary dog archiving tail X

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11. 11 Back to basics?  we are finally moving away from formats to what to express  knowledge structures eg semantically organised grammars  context, interpretation  and restoring curatorial roles  curation as an explicit, indispensible, creative, value-adding, component

12. 12 Social not search?  up until 2003 humans created 5 exabytes of data (five billion gigabytes). We now create that much every day.  we increasingly want to find what we need via our people networks, not a company’s algorithm  if language documentation turns out as successful as we hope, then organising around language codes won’t be the way to go!

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15. 15 Polarities  a ‘language resource’ approach or participatory approach?  do we aim to make it easier or make it richer?  are archivists data ‘shepherds’ or the partners in preservation and promotion?  are archivists automatons or artisans?  are depositors, users and speakers them or us?

16. 16  End