Accessibility, Discoverability, and Functionality: An Audit of and Recommendations for Digital Language Archives

Abstract

While digital archiving has long been standard for linguistics, archives themselves are heterogeneous (Aznar & Seifart 2020), and archived linguistic material is important for researchers and communities, particularly for language reclamation (cf. Baldwin & Olds 2007; Whalen et al. 2016; Hinton 2003, 2018; Kung et al. 2020). The format and usability of scholarly archival collections is shaped by the functions of the management practices at the stewarding institution, making an appreciation of the range of access services provided by such institutions relevant to the evaluation of individual collections. Here we report on a review of 41 digital language archives. Three factors are examined: 1) accessibility, including metadata and site navigation; 2) discoverability, or searchability and internal navigation; and 3) functionality, the overall ease of data retrieval and use. We recognize that the decisions made by both stewards and depositors can greatly impact the accessibility of archived materials; to that end, we present recommendations for how archives might increase the utility of their holdings for their users. We emphasize that our intention is not to dissuade linguists from using archives because of these issues, and we recognize the tremendous amount of work that goes into the upkeep of digital infrastructure, often with very limited institutional support. Implementing such recommendations at an institutional level can establish a fairer peer-review process of archival collections. By delineating precisely what standards fall under the archive management level and what procedures individual depositors are responsible for, the roles of “archivist” and “depositor” become clearer.

Keywords

• language archives
• documentation
• accessibility
• discoverability
• functionality
• linguistics
• endangered languages
• metadata