Workshops

Wikipedia Edit-a-thons: IYIL

In honor of the 2019 International Year of Indigenous Languages (IYIL), and in my capacity as the Archives Manager at AILLA, I co-organized two Wikipedia Edit-a-thons to improve the Wikipedia records about Indigenous languages by expanding articles, adding references and categories, fixing broken links to records in the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America (AILLA), and editing articles to make the content more inclusive and ethical. See the Getting Started page for more information about the events

Image: Wikipedia_logo_puzzle_globe_spins_horizontally_and_vertically,_revealing_the_contents_of_all_of_its_puzzle_pieces.gif by David Richfield (User:Slashme) Github profile (blender file), User:Psiĥedelisto (this rendered version), CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Writing Data Management Plans for Linguistic Research

I co-created this workshop with Andrea Berez-Kroeker and Lauren Collister as part of the grant Developing Standards for Data Citation and Attribution for Reproducible Research in Linguistics (SMA-1447886, Andrea Berez-Kroeker, Gary Holton, Susan Kung & Peter Pulsifer, Co-PIs). We taught this workshop at the 2017 LSA Summer Linguistic Institute at the University of Kentucky. Slides and recordings of the workshop are available in AILLA.

Image: Slide 11 from DMPworkshopSlides.pdf, by Berez-Kroeker, Collister, and Kung 2017, CC BY 4.0.

Institute on Collaborative Language Research (CoLang)

CoLang is a traveling biennial summer training program for language documentation, maintenance, and revitalization methodologies for anyone engaged in language work. It is funded by the Linguistic Society of America, the host universities, and grants from the National Science Foundation. Because collaboration is an important aspect of CoLang, most–but not all–workshops are co-facilitated by 2 or more people.

I have facilitated workshops at the following CoLangs:

Image: Classroom building, University of Florida by Steven Martin (Flickr),CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0

Graphic image. Left side: brown background, the words "ideas and facts cannot be copyrighted," and an image of a light bulb. Right side: orange background, the words "but expressions of ideas and facts can be copyrighted"; image of computer and notepad
CoLang: Navigating Consent, Rights, Intellectual Property and Traditional Knowledge

This workshop is intended for anyone of any level who wants to have a better understanding of issues of informed consent, copyright, intellectual property, traditional or cultural knowledge, and attribution, as well as implications of these issues for language documentation and data collection, language maintenance and revitalization, research, and scholarship. The workshop is organized into a combination of lecture and open discussion about the above named concepts, as well as the concepts of open versus public access, fair use, public domain, terms and conditions of use, access embargoes, access restrictions, access protocols, attribution, etc., and how these concepts interact. To contextualize the class content, we explore various online, digital language archives and other on-line intellectual property resources to provide exposure to processes and legislature that control access and articulate rights and property.  

Image: copyright by susankung, CC BY 4.0

CoLang: Community Language Archives

In this workshop, students develop an understanding of archival best practices as they apply to the creation and maintenance of Community Language Archives. Topics that are addressed include the following: different types and functions of archives (including physical and online digital archives); how to do archival research (including the use of online catalogs and finding aids, navigation of online digital archives); types of language materials that should be put into archives (including copyright, intellectual and cultural property, how to care for physical artifacts and digital files); why, when, and how to donate language materials to an archive (including organization of materials and metadata, costs, policies of archives, and the human element); and when access restrictions might need to be applied to materials in an archive. We briefly touch on how to start a community language archive (physical vs. virtual, partnering with a larger archive, necessary resources, e.g. human, physical, technological, fiscal), but this is not a major focus of the class. No archives experience or knowledge is required. The course will be of interest to those wanting an introduction to language archives and anyone wishing to learn how to better manage language and heritage resources and to preserve resources in their possession.

Susan Gehr and I co-facilitated this workshop at CoLang 2014, 2016, and 2018; Shannon Bischoff joined us in 2014.

Image: archives2 by susankung, CC BY SA 4.0

CoLang: How to Organize Materials & Data for a Language Archive

This workshop (the precursor to Archiving for the Future) teaches participants about the management, organization, and curation that they can do during and after their data collection to prepare their language materials (both born-digital and analog) for deposit into a language archive. Selected discussion themes include the following: Strategies for managing both born-digital and analog data; the importance of collecting metadata simultaneously with the data; file naming strategies for encoding metadata; anticipating who might use the collection and how; what archives can and cannot do for you (e.g., digital preservation versus digital presentation); which kinds of files are suitable for archiving; making collection guides and finding aids; and strategies for managing access to sensitive data and managing access in perpetuity.

Image: Video still from Organizing for Personal vs Archival Workflows by AILLA, 2018, CC BY 4.0

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