Working Group 1: collecting primary text

1. Working Group 1:collecting primary text Session 1: critique existing tools and standards

2. Our mandate • Write good descriptions for tools. • Add tools which need to be added. • Comments on existing tools. EMELD Working Group 1

3. Four levels of functionality • a/d converstion, acquisition • digital editing • (analysis) • storage and periodic migration EMELD Working Group 1

4. Desidirata for tool room • need better descriptions!!!(we will be writing these) • should list what kind of hardware is required • should indicate how much time is required for capture • should indicate cost • should indicate steepness of learning curve EMELD Working Group 1

5. Categories in tool room don’t really make sense • organization in terms of fieldwork activities might make better sense • even categorization by foci of current working groups might be better • best would be focus on fieldwork steps rather than on tools, i.e., what are the tools which support a particular fieldwork step? EMELD Working Group 1

6. Don’t overwhelm people • Arienne: "most users are dealing with a very nuanced situation” • Doug's Hobby Horse: "we need to make everything as accessible as possible and not make it daunting” • Need an easy way to get people into this, as opposed to just a list of tools. EMELD Working Group 1

7. What constitutes analysis? • Some things which could be considered "analysis" are actually basic documentation (e.g., interlinear text). • Absolute bare minimum for language documentation is to have a time-aligned translation into some better-known language at some level (paragraph, sentence, word, morpheme, etc.) EMELD Working Group 1

8. Practical issues • The whole process needs to include many practical issues, such as human subjects. • It really does come down to community. • It really is important to stand up to IRBs. EMELD Working Group 1

9. Closing quote • "It’s a little piece of heaven." – Julia Good Fox EMELD Working Group 1