Collaborative Research: OLAC: Accessing the World's Language Resources

语言资源是语言文献和语言调查的主要来源。它们包括主要的研究对象，如文本和录音，研究成果，如字典和语法，以及支持技术，如软件工具和交换标准。这些资源越来越多地以数字形式进行维护和分发。尽管语言资源已经开始在网络上激增，但它们通常很难或不可能定位和重用。在这个合作研究项目中，dr。宾夕法尼亚大学的马克·利伯曼和史蒂文·伯德以及应用语言学研究生院的加里·西蒙斯博士将通过新的研究来解决这个问题，以增强开放语言档案社区（OLAC）的数字基础设施。OLAC提供了一组标准的语言资源描述符和一个门户，允许用户使用一次搜索同时查询数十种语言存档。然而，目前OLAC的覆盖范围只是冰山一角。该项目的目的是通过在OLAC目录的覆盖范围和OLAC搜索服务的使用方面实现数量级的增长，从而大大改善语言学家和更广泛的兴趣社区对语言资源的访问。该项目将通过两个主要领域的活动来实现这一目标：制定指导方针和服务，鼓励语言档案遵循通过联机信息交流中心（OLAC）发现语言资源的最佳共同实践；开发服务，从图书馆和网络域的资源目录连接到联机信息交流中心（OLAC）目录。该项目通过开发一个在线服务，使语言学家能够访问世界上数千种语言的资源，应该在语言学领域产生广泛的影响。但其影响将远远超出语言学界。访问这些语言资源将有助于努力使信息技术适用于每种语言的技术人员，而不仅仅是精选的几种语言。它还将使教育工作者、学生和广大社会成员能够获得展示世界语言多样性的丰富材料。然而，另一个获取语言资源的受众是世界上所有语言的实际使用者。对于濒危语言而言，获取语言资源是语言复兴过程中的一项重要资产。该项目还将倡导广泛使用ISO 639-3，这是一项新采用的标准，为精确识别过去和现在的7500种已知人类语言提供了代码。这将鼓励当前编目实践的改革，目前的编目实践基于早期的ISO标准，该标准只识别不到400种语言，并开始帮助世界各地的主要知识库适当地处理语言多样性的过程。

Language resources are the bread and butter of language documentation and linguistic investigation. They include the primary objects of study such as texts and recordings, the outputs of research such as dictionaries and grammars, and the enabling technologies such as software tools and interchange standards. Increasingly, these resources are maintained and distributed in digital form. Although language resources have begun to proliferate on the web, they are often difficult or impossible to locate and reuse. In this collaborative research project, Drs. Mark Liberman and Steven Bird of the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Gary Simons of the Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics will address this problem through new research to enhance the digital infrastructure of the Open Language Archives Community (OLAC). OLAC provides a standard set of language resource descriptors and a portal that permits users to query dozens of language archives simultaneously using a single search. However, the current coverage of OLAC is only the tip of the iceberg. The aim of the project is to greatly improve access to language resources for linguists and the broader communities of interest, by achieving an order-of-magnitude increase in the coverage of the OLAC catalog and in the use of OLAC search services. The project will do so through two main areas of activity: developing guidelines and services that encourage language archives to follow best common practices that will facilitate language resource discovery through OLAC, and developing services to bridge from the resource catalogs of the library and web domains to the OLAC catalog.The project should have a broad impact across the field of linguistics by developing an online service that gives linguists access to resources for the thousands of languages in the world. But the impact will extend well beyond the linguistics community. Access to these language resources will assist technologists who are endeavoring to make information technologies work with every language, not just a select few. It will also permit educators, students and members of society at large to access a wealth of materials that demonstrate the full range of linguistic diversity in the world. Yet another audience for access to language resources are the actual speakers of all the languages of the world. In the case of endangered languages, access to language resources is a critical asset in the process of language revitalization. The project will also serve to advocate the widespread use of ISO 639-3, a newly adopted standard that provides codes for precisely identifying the 7,500 known human languages, past and present. This will encourage reform in current cataloging practice which is based on an earlier ISO standard that recognizes fewer than 400 languages, and begin the process of helping the major storehouses of knowledge around the world to deal appropriately with linguistic diversity.