RAPID: Increasing Accessibility and Discoverability at the Alaska Native Language Archive

University Of Alaska Fairbanks Campus, Fairbanks AK

Investigators

Abstract

Endangered language archives play an important role in creating access to a region's cultural, historical and linguistic knowledge for the general public and scholars from a range of disciplines. Obtaining access to archived information can be a complex task. For a non-specialist user, it can be difficult to choose the right terms to type into a search box. The better the catalogue description attached to an archived item, the better the chances that a distant user may be able to access it. This project, focused on archived Native American language materials, will create a process for describing and integrating the combined knowledge that layers of annotation represent, so that users can better access those materials. The Native American Languages Act, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1990, enacted into policy the recognition of the unique status and importance of Native American languages. Knowledge of these languages deepens and enriches our understanding of our multicultural history; it is in the national interest to preserve and share this knowledge. Linguistic documentation of Native American languages has been preserved in libraries and archives since colonial times, but modern technology has given archivists new ways to share access to information. The Alaska Native Language Archive (ANLA) handles Native Language materials for all of the twenty-two Alaska Native Languages, as well as serving as a repository for related languages. This project seeks to broaden and improve access to materials held by ANLA by creating a workflow for the curation of important collections to create access for stakeholders in Alaska Native communities as well as in academic and pedagogical circles. Broader impacts also include the training of a graduate student, and the benefits from modernization of the workflow and the protocols for handling new deposits. ANLA seeks to increase discoverability and reproducibility of data on the region's indigenous languages through professionalization of the archive. The archive has always depended on collection improvement by knowledgeable users. This used to take the form of annotation to folders of papers, or transcriptions of recordings: a linguist would contribute notes after studying the work of other linguists, and these notes would form a new archived item. In the digital world, the layers of relationships between a recording and its derivatives (like transcriptions or other notes and annotations on the content) require careful organization to maintain. With the rapid advances in information science, adding staff with this expertise and ideally also in linguistics will enhance the discoverability and usability of ANLA's data sets, which represent some of the richest language deposits existing for Alaskan and Arctic languages. This project will develop protocols, workflow, and collection management practices in line with best approaches in archival sciences. As a test case, this project will develop a workflow for collection improvement by focusing on a specific subcollection and developing it to its best access level. To do this, a graduate student will annotate and re-catalogue a large set of texts in a single language (Lower Tanana Dene/Athabascan) to demonstrate how subcollection development can improve access for academic and other stakeholders.