Training Archivists about Language Collections

Abstract

When they published their groundbreaking analysis of the social impact of archival representation in 2016, Caswell, Cifor, and Ramirez explained that this impact on communities “manifests itself in issues surrounding the development of personal and community identity, the preservation of culture, broadening understandings of history, and the positive representation of communities” (p. 63). Though largely missing from mainstream archival discourse, language archives of endangered language communities play a vital role in stewarding language artifacts—the evidence of language diversity and linguistic cultural heritage. Training archivists to appropriately and effectively manage language collections and engage with their diverse audiences is important to the re-use and curation lifecycle of language artifacts. Existing training materials related to language archives are often oriented for depositors, both language scholars (Kung et al., 2020; Miller, 2023) and language-community members (CORSAL, 2024). However, university curriculum specifically addressing language artifacts and their management is rarely seen in archival-science and library-science training programs. We report on the development of an open-access curriculum to fill this gap and how language collections have been integrated into several courses in the training of information professionals within American Library Association certified graduate degree programs as well as graduate-level linguistics courses.

We present a set of curricular modules tested in the classroom during the summer of 2024. These will be refined and offered again in 2025 before wider publication. Our work products include a four-module semester-long course and independently adaptable content for pre-existing courses including Corpus Linguistics, Field Methods, Advanced Metadata, Cultural Heritage Stewardship, etc. Some of the important themes addressed include: Fiduciary responsibility, Language identification, Intra- and inter-resource relationships, Resource’s of-ness, Interactive modality and materiality, and Evaluation of community language archives. The selection of these areas of emphasis is informed by assessments of students’ and practitioners’ knowledge gaps (e.g., Aljalahmah & Zavalina, 2023a, 2023b; Zavalin & Zavalina, 2023; Zavalina & Burke, 2021).

As language research becomes more prolific, interest in language artifact preservation is growing among both scholars and language communities. A variety of roles within library and archival praxis require training to support these diverse audiences. Our training gives exposure to information professionals who will: Review prospective deposits including data management plans, Produce ephemeral online interactive experiences containing source materials and the derivative scholarly record, Conduct curation, collection maintenance, and migration tasks, as well as Plan and evaluate digital infrastructure systems for the long-term stewardship of language-artifact collections.

Professional discussions around Archival Education and Research have revealed a significant number of ways that archives can become more connected with their audiences (e.g. Benoit & Eveleigh, 2019; Haberstock, 2020; Lee, 2021; Roeschley & Kim, 2019). However, this discussion has so far, not included perspectives from the stewardship of language and linguistic resources for the furtherance of cultural heritage preservation goals. Our discussion and curriculum fills this important gap.

Tags: OLAC Community Dublin Core FRBR Transcripts Audio Recordings
Categories: Peer Reviewed Conference
Content Mediums: MovingImage Text Event