E-MELD 2006 Workshop on Digital Language Documentation: Tools and Standards - The State of the Art Avoiding Data Graveyards: From Heterogeneous Data Collected in Multiple Research Projects to Sustainable Linguistic Resources

This paper describes a new research initiative addressing the issue of sustainability of linguistic resources. The initiative is a cooperation between three collaborative research centres in Germany – the SFB 441 “Linguistic Data Structures” in Tubingen, the SFB 538 “Multilingualism” in Hamburg, and the SFB 632 “Information Structure” in Potsdam/Berlin. The aim of the project is to develop methods for sustainable archiving of the diverse bodies of linguistic data used at the three sites. In the first half of the paper, the data handling solutions developed so far at the three centres are briefly introduced. This is followed by an assessment of their commonalities and differences and of what these entail for the work of the new joint initiative. The second part sketches seven areas of open questions with respect to sustainable data handling and gives more detailed accounts of two of them – integration of linguistic terminologies and development of best practice guidelines.