Language Archiving

In this chapter, the authors examine the role of language archiving in endangered-language scholarship. First they explore the history of archiving for endangered languages, from the age of Boas and the archiving of analog materials through the rise of the endangered-language movement and the development of best practices for digital archiving to the current era of established archiving standards. Then they discuss a potential future for language archiving, that of the participatory model of language archiving, which is radically user-centered and draws on trends in the archival sciences. Next they present some of the extant archives for language documentation, the members of the Digital Endangered Languages and Music Archiving Network. Finally, because archiving is an activity that is now available to anyone undertaking endangered-language work, they close by presenting the steps one would take to work with an archive to deposit one’s own materials.