Services

Building and running a distributed Knowledge Centre for Linguistic Diversity and Language Documentation requires a flexible and reliable support and knowledge-sharing infrastructure. The services offered by the Knowledge Centre consist of a web presence providing information on the relevant topics, a helpdesk allowing researcher to interact directly with the Centre.

The Website as a Portal to the Centre

The CKLD website (this site) operated by the University of Cologne is the main portal to the Knowledge Centre. The site offers a description of the centre and a list and explanation of its services. Besides providing a collection of information material and further relevant links to software tools, language resources, manuals, and documentation of best practices, the website is also the entrance point into the interaction with the CKLD Helpdesk.

Support through the CKLD Helpdesk

Within two working days, questions will be answered by first-line support, or, if needed, forwarded to experts within the CKLD while keeping the user updated on the status of the inquiry. The incoming inquiries also provide the CKLD with valuable information on which topics need to be covered more in detail on the website or in dedicated trainings.

Teaching and Training Modules

The participating institutions offer courses in language documentation, transcription and annotation, collection and corpus creation, data analysis and research data management. The Endangered Languages Archive is one of the leading providers in language documentation and linguistic diversity training. With the distributed expertise, the CKLD can offer various training modules on topics such as research data management, publication and sustainability, including ethical and legal issues, but also hands-on training that provide researchers and students with the practical knowledge required to actually create high quality language resources. The partners coordinate their training activity and communicate their activities via the CKLD website.