Introducing the CLARIN Knowledge Centre for Linguistic Diversity and Language Documentation

Introducing the CLARIN Knowledge Centre for Linguistic Diversity and Language Documentation Hanna Hedeland, Timm Lehmberg, Felix Rau, Sophie Salffner, Mandana Seyfeddinipur, Andreas Witt HZSK/Universit¨at Hamburg, INEL/Universit¨at Hamburg, IfL/Universit¨at zu K¨oln, ELAR&SWLI/SOAS University of London, IfDH/Universit¨at zu K¨oln {hanna.hedeland, timm.lehmberg}@uni-hamburg.de {f.rau, andreas.witt}@uni-koeln.de elararchive@soas.ac.uk Abstract The European digital research infrastructure CLARIN (Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure) is building a Knowledge Sharing Infrastructure (KSI) to ensure that existing knowledge and expertise is easily available both for the CLARIN community and for the humanities research communities for which CLARIN is being developed. Within the Knowledge Sharing Infrastructure, so called Knowledge Centres comprise one or more physical institutions with particular expertise in certain areas and are committed to providing their expertise in the form of reliable knowledge-sharing services. In this paper, we present the ninth K Centre – the CLARIN Knowledge Centre for Linguistic Diversity and Language Documentation (CKLD) – and the expertise and services provided by the member institutions at the Universities of London (ELAR/SWLI), Cologne (DCH/IfDH/IfL) and Hamburg (HZSK/INEL). The centre offers information on current best practices, available resources and tools, and gives advice on technological and methodological matters for researchers working within relevant fields. Keywords: CLARIN Knowledge Sharing Infrastructure, linguistic diversity, language documentation 1. Introduction The European digital research infrastructure CLARIN (Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastruc- ture)1 is not restricted to interconnected technical cen- tres and service units; CLARIN is also actively building a Knowledge Sharing Infrastructure (KSI) to ensure that existing knowledge and expertise in individual centres all across Europe (and beyond) is easily available both for the CLARIN community and for the humanities research com- munities for which CLARIN is being developed. Within the Knowledge Sharing Infrastructure2, so called Knowl- edge Centres3, or K Centres, play an important role. The Knowledge Centres comprise one or more physical institu- tions with particular expertise in certain areas and are com- mitted to providing their expertise in the form of reliable knowledge-sharing services. In this paper, we present the ninth K Centre: CLARIN Knowledge Centre for Linguistic Diversity and Language Documentation (CKLD)4, certified in September 2017. The CKLD is a virtual distributed centre comprising in- stitutions at the Universities of London (ELAR/SWLI), Cologne (DCH/IfDH/IfL) and Hamburg (HZSK/INEL). The mission of the CKLD is to establish a single interface to reliably provide the expertise on various aspects of the thematic focus brought in by the founding members. Sec- tion 3. thus describes the areas of competence and specific services of the individual partners. 1https://www.clarin.eu/ 2https://www.clarin.eu/content/ knowledge-sharing 3https://www.clarin.eu/content/ knowledge-centres 4http://ckld.uni-koeln.de The knowledge-sharing services provided by the CKLD are the topic of section 4.: The center offers information on cur- rent best practices, available resources and tools, and gives advice in technological and methodological matters for re- searchers working within relevant fields. As a member of the European digital research infrastructure CLARIN, the aim of the CKLD is also to allow for a better integration of these research communities and the resources and tools tra- ditionally used into existing and emerging digital research infrastructures. …

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