OLAC, the Open Language Archives Community, is an initiative to create a unified means of searching online databases of language resources for
linguistic
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
research. The information about resources is stored in
XML
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...
format for easy searching. OLAC was founded in 2000, and is hosted at the
Linguistic Data Consortium webserver at the
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest- ...
.
OLAC advises on best practices in language archiving, and works to promote interoperation between language archives.
Metadata
The OLAC metadata set is based on the complete set of
Dublin Core
220px, Logo image of DCMI, which formulates Dublin Core
The Dublin Core, also known as the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set (DCMES), is a set of fifteen "core" elements (properties) for describing resources. This fifteen-element Dublin Core has ...
metadata terms DCMT, but the format allows for the use of extensions to express community-specific qualifiers. It is often contrasted to
IMDI
IMDI (ISLE Meta Data Initiative) is a metadata standard to describe multi-media and multi-modal language resources. The standard provides interoperability for browsable and searchable corpus structures and resource descriptions with help of speci ...
(ISLE Metadata Initiative).
Attributes
The OLAC metadata is based on five primary attributes, ''refine, code, scheme, lang,'' and ''langs'', although the last attribute is only for completed metadata sets.
Each attribute serves a different function and is applicable in a different section of the metadata.
Elements
There are currently 23 different elements that OLAC lists on its metadata page. Elements may be used more than once, and not every element is required in a metadata submission. Each element's entry on the official OLAC page includes the name of the element, its function, notes on its usage, and examples of its coding.
In addition, OLAC provides a list of metadata extensions to augment descriptions.
References
External links
Official website(an
alternative server
Search OLAC
Linguistics organizations
Organizations established in 2000
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