CIRCA:Steven Bird, Gary Simons. “Seven Dimensions of Portability for Language Documentation and Description.”

From CIRCA

Steven Bird, Gary Simons. “Seven Dimensions of Portability for Language Documentation and Description.” Language, Vol. 79, No. 3 (Sep., 2003), pp. 557-582.

This paper deals with the issue of “portability of digital language resources” in terms of digital documentation and description of linguistic data management, especially concerned with its ability to transcend computer environment, scholarly communities, domains of communication, passage of time and technical aspects such as compatibleness of software or version to be available to those in need. The paper thus started with a survey of existing tools and technologies and pointed out their lack of portability in different degrees: “Clearly our technologies for storing and delivering language resources fall far short of our need for easy reuse”. (561) To raise the long neglected attention on portability after the process of digital documentation, he then identified seven kinds of portability problems categorized as content, format, discovery, access, citation, perseveration and rights. All of which are worth our consideration especially with what has been pointed out under the heading of preservation: “digital resources…often have a short lifespan, and typically become unusable three to five years after they cease to be actively maintained.” (567) But to balance the above disappointing facts, he afterwards gave value statements to assess best practices and provided sets of recommendations to follow for those who similarly adopt digital tool for data documentation and wish to render the experience for archive users agreeable.