A project sponsored by LSA Committee on Endangered Languages and Their Preservation (CELP) and led by Kate Lindsey (klindsey@bu.edu) and Jorge Emilio Rosés Labrada (jrosesla@ualberta.ca)
HELP for Endangered Legacy Collections is a new initiative from within the Committee on Endangered Languages and their Preservation (CELP) to assist in the digitization, archiving, and processing of endangered language data. This initiative attempts to tackle two concerns within our field: (1) the fact that many senior researchers nearing retirement need assistance in digitizing, archiving and processing their legacy collections of endangered language data and (2) the fact that there is an increasing number of graduate students who wish to undertake work on endangered languages but are not able to collect their own data due to a variety of reasons, e.g., travel restrictions (especially in the wake of the current global pandemic), lack of funding, family obligations, health concerns, and so on.
We are soliciting interest from senior researchers with an existing collection or collections in need of archiving and from junior researchers who are interested in joining an archiving project. Upon receipt of the surveys, we will manually pair up senior and junior researchers. In particular, we are looking to host projects that 1) are urgent whether because of the vitality of the language or the state of the data collection, 2) meet the needs of both the senior and junior researchers in terms of opportunities for further research, publication, presentations, etc. and 3) can begin promptly with high priority for both researchers. We strongly encourage projects that involve continued collaboration with interested language communities and repatriation of the data to the communities of origin.
We plan to select two pairs by August 15, 2020. After connecting senior and junior researchers, we will provide resources and advice to help the projects get started and will remain in regular contact with the teams to address any issues that may arise. At the end of the project, we will follow up with each researcher individually to collect feedback that will help us create better resources and advice for future pairs of researchers.
Senior researcher interest survey: https://forms.gle/b1tgUxC37Q9zbsLq5
Junior researcher interest survey: https://forms.gle/S8BfsQiryhZ6CBz47