Customizing the IMDI metadata schema for endangered languages

Heidi Johnson (AILLA)

Arienne Dwyer (DOBES)

Introduction

IMDI: International Standards for Language Engineering Metadata Initiative DOBES: Volkswagen Foundation’s Documentation of Endangered Languages initiativeAILLA: the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America

Types of resources

Audio and video recordings in various digital formatsAnnotation text files, e.g. transcriptions and translationsStandalone texts, e.g. dictionaries, poetryWide range of genres: from verbal art to scholarly analyses

Bundles of resources

Session (IMDI, 2001): resources resulting from a linguistic elicitation session - recordings and annotations.Only models one kind of resource production - a recording session.Collections will include a greater variety of resources, in sets of related materials.

Types of bundles

Canonical bundle: the original session. A digitized recording, in different formats, and some textual annotation files, also in different formats.Minimal bundle: a single file. Examples: dictionary, poem, recording of uninterpretable chants.Meta-bundle: a bundle containing other bundles. Example: a book about a set of annotated recordings.

Bundle elements

Current:– Name of bundle– Date and place of production

Proposed:– Resource relations– Date archived– Last modified

Major subschemas

Project

Collector

Content

Participants

Resources

References

The Content Subschema

Genre is the top-level category:– Interaction: conversation, interview …– Explanation: description, recipe …– Performance: narrative, poem, oratory …– Teaching: primer, textbook …– Analysis: grammar, dictionary …

Other Content categories

Modality: speech, writing, gestureCommunication context:– Interactivity– Planning– Involvement

LanguagesTaskDescriptionKeys

AILLA’s Content Keys

Register: a characterization of how the discourse reflects the social context. Example: honorific speech

Style: about poetic and stylistic effects. Examples: parallelism, metered verse.

The Project subschema

Current elements:– Name: a nickname or acronym– Title: official title– ID: a unique identifier– Contact information

Proposed element:– Funder: name of funding organization

The Collector subschema

AILLA renames this Depositor, since this is the individual we have to keep track of (e.g. for Level 3 access permission). When the Depositor is not also the Collector, Collector can be listed under Participants.

The Participants subschema

Type: functional role, e.g. creator

Role: family relationship

Name/Full name

Language(s)

Ethnic group, age, sex:

Education

Anonymous: True if participant’s Full name is reserved; False otherwise

AILLA additions to Participants

Origin: Place (country, region, etc) of origin of the creator of the primary resource in the bundle (e.g. the speaker whose voice is recorded).

Occupation: Can be relevant in assessing accuracy of some kinds of data.

The Resources subschema

Resources contains information about formats and provenance of files in a bundle.Media Files: audio, video, etc. Annotation Files: text files.Proposal: call them all Media Files, to reduce redundancy in the database. (All have URL, size, etc. elements.)

Text resources

Current elements:– Type: type of annotation, e.g. phonetic

transcription.– Content encoding: annotation encoding

scheme, e.g. EUROTYP.– Character encoding: character set(s) used

in a text file.

Text resources 2

Proposed elements:– Transcription type– Translation (aka Glossing) type– Software: used to produce transcriptions,

translations, other annotations (e.g. Shoebox)

Describe Annotator in Participants (along with Translator, etc.)

Proposed subschema

Place: composed of several elements:– Continent– Country– Region– Subregion (address)

Repeated at least twice, in Bundle and in Participants (Origin).Might also be useful in the Language subschema.

Conclusion

IMDI schema is a flexible tool.

Customization through Key/Value pairs allows local modifications.

Most of the proposed changes are terminological, moving from the DOBES in-house terminology to more general usage.