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MEAP at the Computational Resource for South Asian languages Symposium
In early October, MEAP Program Manager Elizabeth Lhost traveled to Bloomington, Indiana to attend the eighth annual symposium for CoRSAL (Computational Resource for South Asian languages). Organized by Shobhana Chelliah and Mary Downs and supported by several units at Indiana University, Bloomington (including the Dhar India Studies Program, Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, and the Wells Library), the event brought together scholars, students, researchers, and librarians with interests in studying, documenting, and supporting languages from South Asia. The one-day program was filled with presentations about ongoing research, library collections, language documentation efforts, and community engagement.
MEAP was part of the morning’s first Resource Showcase session. During her presentation, Lhost highlighted three aspects of MEAP’s work: (1) providing grants to document and digitize endangered cultural heritage collections; (2) hosting digitized collections; and (3) working with the UCLA Library to build digital infrastructure that accommodates and supports less-commonly studied languages. The presentation drew attention to MEAP’s commitment and contributions to documenting and preserving linguistically diverse collections from South Asia and beyond.
Preserving Language Documentation and Linguistically Diverse Cultural Heritage Collections
Lhost’s presentation featured MEAP Project, Recordings of Hereditary Musicians of Western Rajasthan(opens in a new tab). This collection includes 1,100 records(opens in a new tab) in over a dozen different languages, including Marwari(opens in a new tab), Hindi(opens in a new tab), English(opens in a new tab) and Mewati(opens in a new tab). The UCLA Digital Library also includes over 1,500 related digital objects in the Digital Archive of South Asian Traditional Music and Arts Collection(opens in a new tab).
In addition to these projects from South Asia, MEAP has also funded several projects related to language documentation in other parts of the world. These projects include the cohort three project to curate and digitize materials from the Instituto de Lengua y Cultura Aymara (Bolivia)(opens in a new tab) and the cohort one project to document Justino Valentim’s collection of Vaihoho (Timor Leste)(opens in a new tab). These digital collections contain field notes, glossaries (dictionaries), recordings, and instructional materials related to these language communities. Recently funded projects to digitize audio recordings from the Murui, Magütá and Miraña Peoples in Colombia and Eloyi musical traditions in Nigeria will add to the linguistic diversity of MEAP’s digital collections.
Exploring MEAP's Commitment to Mutli-Lingual Data
To date, MEAP funding has supported the digitization of objects in roughly 90 different languages, including South Asian languages like Bengali, Marwari, Hindi, Sindhi, and Gujarati. Many of MEAP’s collections from South Asia also include metadata in local scripts, too, like the Hereditary Musicians of Western Rajasthan collection(opens in a new tab) that includes metadata in Devanagari and the Religion and Politics in Modern Bengal(opens in a new tab) collection that includes metadata in Bangla script.
MEAP’s emphasis on multilingual description extends to collections from other regions as well. The Albanian Photographic and Graphic Art Collection(opens in a new tab), which contains posters, photographs, animation drawings, and film stills has metadata for over 18,000 objects in English and Albanian. Likewise, the ISPAN Cap Haitien Archives(opens in a new tab) is another collection containing visual materials (architectural drawings, photographs) that are described in three languages: English, French, and Haitian Kreyòl.
As Lhost’s presentation at IU highlighted, MEAP’s support for and commitment to multilingual metadata and descriptive practices allows it to privilege local understandings of collection items and to make those objects more accessible by using local languages and terms. This ongoing work allows collection custodians and researchers to continue to document and preserve the linguistic diversity around the world.