Linguistic archives and language communities questionnaire: establishing (re-)use criteria

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to prepare data that can be used as a base for establishing best practices for making archival linguistic materials available for (re-)use by members of language communities. Design/methodology/approach To assess how archival materials can be made more readily available to marginalized language communities, the authors use a questionnaire targeted at their members and, to a lesser extent, outsider researchers worldwide. Findings The collected data shows certain peculiar – and likely new – tendencies that are vital for finding practical approaches to data access. Importantly, the language communities in question have decent internet access, mainly via mobiles phones and smartphones. They are actively present in social networks and commonly use messengers. Research limitations/implications This study has several biases. It pre-depends on internet access and is based upon a relatively small group of respondents fluent in English, Russian, Spanish or French. Besides these, not all questions were apparently understood as intended. Practical implications To enable better access of marginalized language communities to archived language materials, it seems meaningful to recommend developing mobile-friendly infrastructure, possibly integrated into popular platforms. Originality/value To the best the authors’ knowledge, the question of access to archived linguistic materials by language community members globally, as well as their connectivity and communication habits, was not the subject of previous research with the means of survey data.