Facilitating language documentation through incremental development of digital archive infrastructure

Abstract

This dissertation engages in the methodology of language documentation by exploring how technology augments and/or hinders the processes of language documentation, with a specific focus on digital archive infrastructure. It seeks to make incremental improvements to the design of this infrastructure and thus the processes of language documentation. To do so, it asks: how can the design of digital infrastructure for archives be modified to increase archives’ abilities to uphold principles of better practice in language documentation without drastically increasing the demand for resources placed on archives to deploy this infrastructure? To answer this and related questions, I conducted a literature review, and I participated in conducting a series of workshops for users of the Native American Languages (NAL) archive to engage them in discussions and elicit feedback on what they want from digital archive infrastructure. With the information collected from these steps, I developed a design for digital archive infrastructure, in collaboration with NAL staff and IT development personnel at the University of Oklahoma, which incrementally modifies existing designs with the goal of furthering the effectiveness of language archives at preserving language data and providing appropriate access to these data in ways that empower Indigenous language communities. The literature review identified key principles defined by the field for better practices in language documentation, and divided these principles into three categories from the perspective of archives: bringing data into the archive, getting data out of the archive, and cultivating relationships among stakeholders in language documentation and users of the archive. With these categories established, it identified the movement of data out of archives and cultivating relationships as areas of focus in the development of digital archive infrastructure. Finally, it presented recent and ongoing developments of archive infrastructure, and key aspects of modern web application software that can enable future developments. The results from the workshops with NAL archive users confirmed the areas of focus identified in the literature review, in the sense that the interests, desires, and needs expressed by workshop participants mostly fell into these areas, specifically providing access to collections and maintaining relationships between Indigenous communities and the archive. These discussions motivated the inclusion of specific features in the design for digital archive infrastructure, including metadata fields, specific search and browse capabilities, and a system of user roles for moderation of collections and items in order to enable context specific co-curation. Based on the information gathered from the literature review and workshops, a design for digital archive infrastructure was developed that modifies existing designs with the use of features from modern web applications in order to further the archive's ability to implement better practices by enabling different forms of access, co-curation, iterative archiving, and digital return. In summary, this study engaged in the development of the methodology of language documentation by seeking to understand its foundational principles for better practice, and developing a design for digital archive infrastructure that further enables archives to enact these principles.