Imagine if no one had thought to preserve copies of the Iliad and the Odyssey, or Beowulf, or the Bhaghavad Gita, before the languages they were composed in became extinct. The world would have lost some of its greatest works of literature forever. There are great works of oral literature in the world today that are in danger of being lost, because the languages that they are composed in are dying, as their last speakers grow old and die and their children adopt other languages. Out of some 5,000 languages currently spoken, only half are expected to survive into the next century. Linguists and anthropologists are working with speakers of these endangered languages to record as much as possible of their oral literatures, histories, myths, traditional musics and other forms of knowledge before it is too late. They are producing prodigious amounts of recorded information on a wide range of media. These recordings must all be converted into standard digital formats and preserved in digital archives, where they can be securely maintained for future generations and also be used today by speakers, scholars, and students for a variety of research and educational activities.
The Digital Endangered Languages and Musics Archive Network is a global organization dedicated to pooling methods and technologies for creating and managing the archives that are tasked with preserving this priceless linguistic heritage. Members of the Network meet annually to coordinate efforts and determine strategies for improving the security and accessibility of endangered language archives around the world. With support from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Joel Sherzer will host the third annual meeting of the Network at the University of Texas at Austin in November, 2005. The Network is currently working on developing improved methods of managing access to sensitive materials, like sacred chants or personal histories, so that the creators of these resources can feel secure about archiving them. The Network is also working on designs and strategies that will make it easier to establish digital endangered language archives and thus add members to the Network. The Network is also working on designs for "archivelets": smaller archive outlets that offer localized sets of resources to specific communities, like a minority language community, with localized interfaces but without the expensive burden of preserving the resources over the long term.
