The Catalogue of Endangered Languages (ELCat) is the most significant resource on the endangered languages of the world. It is a unique, multipurpose resource for endangered language work, valuable to a range of audiences. ELCat has shown that 3230 languages are endangered today; this represents 43% of the world's 7106 living languages. It is imperative to know not only how critically endangered a language is, but also how much it can contribute to scientific knowledge and how well it has already been described. In the two years since its launch, ELCat has been regularly used not only by scholars, communities and individuals struggling with language endangerment, but also by funding agencies seeking guidance in the allocation of limited resources, by educators, students, and media representatives, and by the general public, with applications ranging from those seeking scientific knowledge to those wanting general information, to pedagogy, to language policy and planning to community action, to seeking help with language documentation and revitalization projects.
This workshop will bring together the Regional Directors of ELCat to discuss plans for the long-term sustainable maintenance of the project. Topics to be discussed include assessment of personnel and technology needs; plans for continued curation; the creation of an ELCat Board of Directors; and increased functionality for site users including crowdsourcing, a question-and-discussion area, and activity-based user experience paths.
The workshop format has two components: (1) Presentations by invited participants, to present overviews of the outcomes and achievements of the Catalogue of Endangered Languages project, challenges ELCat faces and must address for its future, desiderata for infrastructure for a sustainable Catalogue, candidate strategies for providing for ELCat's long-term survival and maintenance; and (2) Working group sessions. Each working group will be composed of four to five members, addressing a specific question, challenge, or need in designing a sustainable future for the Catalogue. Membership in the working groups will be determined by participants' choices based on their experience, expertise, and interest in a specific topic. Working groups will be provided with suggested discussion questions, open-ended enough to allow discussion of other themes and ideas that group members may want to add. Discussion of these questions should lead to formulating specific goals and to recommendations about how to achieve those goals.
