Open Language Archives Community – News
Presentation at “Language Documentation and Archiving” (LD&A 2026, in Berlin) [September 2026]
“Reviving the Open Language Archives Community (OLAC)”: Presentation of recent work for OLAC (including the present updated website with a faceted search service) and perspectives looking forward.
Conference link:
Release of faceted OLAC Search Service [April 2025]
Linguistic Linked Open Data [Aug 2016]
The OLAC system has now been integrated with the Linguistic Linked Open Data Cloud. Linked Data is “a recommended best practice for exposing, sharing, and connecting pieces of data, information, and knowledge on the Semantic Web using URIs and RDF.” This opens the way for the contents of OLAC’s participating archives to be interlinked and queried.
Archive submission policies [Nov 2015]
As a service to linguists who are in search of an archive that could receive a deposit of language resources they have created, information about the submission policy of OLAC repositories was put together in 2015. As of 2026, the information provided is not up-to-date anymore; potential depositors are invited to look up the information directly from the participating archives.
Language Archives Tutorial at the meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) [Jan 2009]
In January 2009, an OLAC-endorsed tutorial on language archives was held at the winter meeting of the Linguistic Society of America.
- Accessing collaboration: Archives as bridges between researchers, resources and communities of speakers, Heidi Johnson and Jeff Good (organizers)
OLAC Presented at three Pacific Conferences [2008-2009]
In 2008 and 2009, OLAC was presented at conferences in Australia, the Philippines, and Hawaiʻi: the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (Australia), the Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation (Philippines), and the 1st International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation (Hawaiʻi).
- OLAC: Accessing the World’s Language Resources, Steven Bird and Gary Simons. Presentation delivered at the annual conference of the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (September 2008)
- Toward a global infrastructure for the sustainability of language resources, Gary Simons and Steven Bird. Proceedings of the 22nd Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation (November 2008)
- OLAC: Accessing the World’s Language Resources, presentation delivered at the 1st International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation (March 2009).
OLAC Presents at DRIVER Summit: [Jan 2008]
In January 2008, the DRIVER project (Digital Repository Infrastructure Vision for European Research) convened a Summit to present results of its initial test-bed phase and to pave the way for establishing an operational confederation of digital repositories. DRIVER responds to the vision that all relevant scientific content should be easily accessible through internet-based infrastructures. Like OLAC, DRIVER builds on the OAI (Open Archives Initiative) infrastructure. OLAC was invited to present its work on developing a “thematic” federation of repositories focused on language resources.