Tag Archives: OALC

Resetting OLAC Documentation

Posted on by
Reply

OLAC Documentation is a set independently evolving documents with their own version numbers. What if these documents evolved together in sync? would it make the process more manageable? What if the documentation looked different? More like modern documentation?

I like the following document presentation layouts:

https://github.com/bep/docuapi
https://github.com/matcornic/hugo-theme-learn
https://github.com/alex-shpak/hugo-book
https://github.com/google/docsy
https://github.com/h-enk/doks

Next step is to take the most recent versions of OLAC documents and convert them to markdown. This converter catches all the XML tags while others don't https://codebeautify.org/html-to-markdown

On the list are:

http://www.language-archives.org/OLAC/repositories.html
http://www.language-archives.org/OLAC/metadata.html
http://www.language-archives.org/REC/bpr.html
http://www.language-archives.org/REC/olac-extensions.html
And each of the extensions.
These need to be cast one way for devs and implementers of technology while another way for managers and archivists.

OLAC language view pages

Posted on by
Reply

There are several views in the OLAC website. Each with specific purposes.

MARC profiles for Language Archives

Posted on by
Reply

AACR2 and RDA both constitute application profiles using the same database structure known as MARC. MARC defines the fields and the expected values within those fields (type control) while AACR2 and RDA compose definitions of cognitive models and data fingerprinting (not the LIS terms for these concepts). By cognitive model I mean the mental representation of entities and their relationships and by fingerprinting of data I mean that some artifacts are "well described" when various fields are employed. E.g., a book description needs a publisher, while a manuscript does not.

AACR2 and RDA both constitute application profiles to which the documentation is only provided on a subscription basis. This is a pay-to-play game. This sort of game is not well received by the language documentation community. These facts do no mean that preservation organizations need to avoid MARC, rather a MARC profile could be established and documented in the open.

When considering the future of OLAC and language resource archiving an outstanding question emerges, is this sort of profile something that is of interest within the community?