Born Archival
The Ebb and Flow of Digital Documents from the Field
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2156255 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Mark Turin (0000-0002-2262-0986, University of British Columbia, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2011 |
| Volume | 22 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 445-460 |
| Publication date | 2011-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | History and Anthropology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0275-7206 • E-ISSN: 1477-2612 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/02757206.2011.626776 |
| OpenAlex | W1992927009 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 9 |
| References cited | 11 |
Facilitated by an infusion of funding from philanthropic sources, descriptive linguists have been galvanized to document the world's languages before they disappear without record. Linguists have responded to the "crisis of documentation" (Dobrin, L. M. & Berson, J. (2011), "Speakers and Language Documentation", in The Cambridge Handbook of Endangered Languages, P. K. Austin & J. Sallabank (eds), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 187–211) by entering into increasingly collaborative partnerships with speech communities, producing "documents" that have both local relevance and academic integrity. The growth in access to digital recording technology has meant that contemporary research initiatives on endangered languages are not only born digital, but often birthed straight into an archive. Yet heritage collections of recordings made by ethnographers and linguists in the past are ever more endangered, becoming orphaned when their collectors die or fragmented into their component parts based on the medium of documentation when they are finally archived. Drawing on fieldwork in Nepal with a community speaking an endangered Tibeto–Burman language, and reflecting on the decade I have spent directing a digital humanities research initiative—the Digital Himalaya Project—I discuss how linguists and anthropologists are collecting, protecting and connecting their data, and how technology influences their relationship to documents
Documentation · Endangered species · Ethnography · Library science · Linguistics · Media studies · Political science · Relevance (law · Sociology · Anthropology · Computer Science · Diverse Musicological Studies · History · Law · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Multilingual Education and Policy
Digital Strategies for Cultural Repatriation
Language ecology, language endangerment, and relict languages
What Next for Digital Himalaya? Reflections on Community, Continuity, and Collaboration
Monumental Names
Endangerment, Biodiversity and Culture
Heritage languages and language as heritage
Archiving anthropology in Portugal
Digital Himalaya and the Collaborative Publishing Experience
What Does "Open Data" Mean for Ethnographic Research
| Unique citing works | 9 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,64 |
| Citation span | 2012 - 2026 (15) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 9 |