Conference
Berlin & Online, 4-6 September 2024

Many lessons have been learned in the last 20 years of documentation and archiving, and all over the world activists, communities, researchers, and artists have developed documentation projects, apps, art installations, archival collections, films, and multimedia projects telling the many stories and histories of Indigenous languages and their creators and keepers. This conference brings together people working in this area to present papers, posters, and conduct training sessions aiming to develop capacity, present new approaches to documentation and preservation, and access to primary records. It offers models of how we can create, strengthen, enhance, and amplify language records. The conference will bring new ideas and views together, share knowledge and support the communities who are working to record and revitalise Indigenous languages.

Abstract submission open now, until 15 April 2024.

Authors may submit only one abstract as the first author, but they may be collaborators on more than one abstract submission. Please note that the poster session will be online-only.

We especially invite submissions on the following themes in language documentation and archiving:

Building Relationships:

• Models for building relationships and refining approaches for collaboration with indigenous communities
• Legacy collections: building relationships for discovery, preservation, and ethically-informed access
• Critical perspectives on language archiving: post- or neo- colonial?
• Identifying and responding to support needs and ethical considerations for improving the accessibility of language materials
• Language documentation practice as a medium for indigenous agency and revitalization
• Models for engaging and supporting indigenous communities in collaborative and community-driven documentation efforts
• How to work with differing expectations among speech community members
  

Tools and Techniques:

• Documentary tools and practices (e.g., remote methods, tools & methods for projects with specific foci, tools & workflows for managing collaborative projects, etc.)Indigenous ways of teaching & learning for documentation and language support
• Enhancing annotation practices: orthography, translation, ethnography, and ethics
• Improving tools to support the creation of archivable collections (e.g., ongoing software projects)
• Using social media and other technologies to support and promote minoritized languages

Impacts of Documentation and Archiving:

• Reports on how archived materials are being used by indigenous communities
• What insights into language have documentary methods provided?
• From paper to digital, the qualitative differences of language records
• Archives presentation/poster on what they have done over the past decade and what they plan on doing

Planning and Design for the Decade:

• Reports from indigenous-led documentation, training, and revitalization projects
• Language archiving: current assessment and future prospects
• Approaches and solutions for making digital archives more navigable and engaging to indigenous communities
• Models for providing access where there is little or no internet access
• Engaging the broader public through artistic and educational initiatives drawing on archived language materials
• Revising OLAC metadata and other standards for accessible archiving

On the two days preceding the conference, September 2-3, 2024 there will be free in-person (Berlin) trainings in language documentation and archiving topics.

For more information on the conference, visit the website at langdoc.org.