User Needs in Language Archives: Findings from Interviews with Language Archive Managers, Depositors, and End-Users

Language archives, like other scholarly digital repositories, are built with two major audiences in mind. These are depositors of language data and various potential end-users of these materials: researchers (linguistics and others), language communities, students, educators, artists, etc. Being a relatively new phenomenon, language archives have made significant strides forward in providing access to digital language data. With the purpose of identifying the needs of language archive end-users (both met and currently unmet), our interdisciplinary team of linguists and information scientists interviewed language archive managers, end-users, and depositors. This study offers a first look into the decision-making processes and end-user experiences of these groups. To support the continued development of language archives, the exploratory study reported in this article provides empirical data on language archive user needs and supports some anecdotal evidence of known issues facing language archive end-users, depositors, and managers in primarily academic contexts.