Third Annual Meeting of the Digital Endangered Languages and Musics Archive Network
November 21-22, 2005
The Digital Endangered Languages and Musics Archive Network is a global organization dedicated to pooling methods and technologies for creating and managing the archives that are tasked with preserving the world's priceless linguistic heritage.
Members of the Network meet annually to coordinate efforts and determine strategies for improving the security and accessibility of endangered language archives around the world. With support from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Joel Sherzer will host the third annual meeting of the Network at the University of Texas at Austin in November, 2005. The Network is currently working on developing improved methods of managing access to sensitive materials, like sacred chants or personal histories, so that the creators of these resources can feel secure about archiving them.
The Network is also working on designs and strategies that will make it easier to establish digital endangered language archives and thus add members to the Network. The Network is also working on designs for "archivelets": smaller archive outlets that offer localized sets of resources to specific communities, like a minority language community, with localized interfaces but without the expensive burden of preserving the resources over the long term.