Finding Metadata for Digital Archiving in Linguistic Fieldnotes

One of 13 items in the series: Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Digital Language Archives: LangArc 2025 available on this site.
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Article examining how digital language archives can address challenges of legacy field materials through a case study from the Computational Resource for South Asian Languages (CoRSAL), a repository dedicated to preserving and documenting the languages of South Asia. It focuses on two CoRSAL legacy projects: the curation of Norman Zide’s extensive collection on the Munda languages of north-central India (Gutob, Gta’, Korku, and Mundari), and the classroom fieldnotes of James Matisoff on Tibeto-Burman languages. These cases illustrate the opportunities for deriving rich metadata and contextual information from legacy field materials, demonstrating how digital curation can extend the life and reach … continued below

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3 p.

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Chelliah, Shobhana Lakshmi; Lowe, John Brandon & Fos, Jonas December 30, 2025.

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Article examining how digital language archives can address challenges of legacy field materials through a case study from the Computational Resource for South Asian Languages (CoRSAL), a repository dedicated to preserving and documenting the languages of South Asia. It focuses on two CoRSAL legacy projects: the curation of Norman Zide’s extensive collection on the Munda languages of north-central India (Gutob, Gta’, Korku, and Mundari), and the classroom fieldnotes of James Matisoff on Tibeto-Burman languages. These cases illustrate the opportunities for deriving rich metadata and contextual information from legacy field materials, demonstrating how digital curation can extend the life and reach of fieldworkers’ original documentation. It was presented at the 3rd International Workshop on Digital Language Archives held on December 15-16, 2025 as part of the ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries 2025.

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3 p.

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Abstract: Pre-digital to born-digital formats are vital to the preservation and transmission of linguistic and cultural knowledge. Yet, these materials present distinctive challenges: their content and formats reflect the specialized practices of the subfield of Language Documentation and Description, they were originally organized for analog rather than digital use, and they typically assumed a single user—the fieldworker. This paper examines how digital language archives can address these challenges through a case study from the Computational Resource for South Asian Languages (CoRSAL), a repository dedicated to preserving and documenting the languages of South Asia. We focus on two CoRSAL legacy projects: the curation of Norman Zide’s extensive collection on the Munda languages of north-central India (Gutob, Gta’, Korku, and Mundari), and the classroom fieldnotes of James Matisoff on Tibeto-Burman languages. These cases illustrate the opportunities for deriving rich metadata and contextual information from legacy field materials, demonstrating how digital curation can extend the life and reach of fieldworkers’ original documentation.

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  • 3rd International Workshop on Digital Language Archives, December 15-16, 2025.
  • ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries, December 15-19, 2025.

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  • Publication Title: Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Digital Language Archives: LangArc 2025
  • Page Start: 49
  • Page End: 51
  • Peer Reviewed: Yes

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International Workshop on Digital Language Archives

This interactive workshop explores a broad scope of issues related to digital language archives—digital libraries that preserve and provide online access to language data. The collection includes proceedings and articles from the workshop.

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Proceedings of the International Workshop on Digital Language Archives: LangArc-2025 (Book)

Proceedings of the International Workshop on Digital Language Archives: LangArc-2025

Conference proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Digital Language Archives held on December 15-16, 2025 as part of the ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries 2025. It includes 11 peer-reviewed papers that were presented at the workshop and an introduction from the workshop organizers.

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Proceedings of the International Workshop on Digital Language Archives: LangArc-2025, ark:/67531/metadc2543332

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  • December 30, 2025

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  • Jan. 13, 2026, 7:15 a.m.

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  • Jan. 20, 2026, 4:31 p.m.

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Chelliah, Shobhana Lakshmi; Lowe, John Brandon & Fos, Jonas. Finding Metadata for Digital Archiving in Linguistic Fieldnotes, article, December 30, 2025; (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc2543327/: accessed March 16, 2026), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT College of Information.

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