ACL2003 Resources Information Infrastructure Workshop
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Towards a Resources Information Infrastructure
Workshop at ACL2003
in Sapporo (Japan)
Organised by ENABLER / ELSNET
Description
The problem addressed by this workshop is the well-known information
problem. People are creating, exploring and exploiting language resources
all over the world. Those who are working with resources know a lot about
their own and other resources, and they are generally prepared to share
this knowledge, their expertise and in many cases even their resources
with others via publications in journals, presentations at conferences,
and via the web.
Unfortunately this information, however public, is not accessible in any
systematic way for those who need resources, who want to know what sort of
resources exist, how resources should be annotated, which standards to
adhere to, which tools to use, etc etc. We will call this problem the
'Resources Information Problem'.
The problem has also a geographical dimension: As work on specific
languages is very often concentrated in specific parts of the world, much
relevant information has a tendency to stay in one geographical place.
This is an obstacle for those who are working on these same languages in
different parts of the world, and it makes it harder to port knowledge and
expertise gained on one language to other languages.
The above observation are far from novel, and it would be naive to think
that the problems will ever go away. At the same time one can observe that
there are organisations (associations, agencies, projects, networks, etc)
that have access to parts or fragments of this information and that have
their own infrastructures that facilitate access to this information by
internal or external people.
The purpose of this workshop is to investigate how we can exploit the
existing infrastructures to a maximum in order to facilitate world-wide
access to information on language resources. The role of the workshop will
be to bootstrap this process.
Approach
- First of all we will try to make an initial map of the language
resources landscape world-wide. This map will include actors,
organisations, repositories, standards, projects, tool libraries, etc
etc. All participants will be asked beforehand to submit pointers to
such items. They will be collected and published.
- At the workshop we will invite representatives of a number of
organisations that can be seen as key actors in the field, and they will
be asked to present ideas about the way their organisation could
contribute to solving the Resources Information Problem. These ideas
could range from very concrete and immediately implementable proposals
to longer term and visionary actions.
- A round table discussion at the workshop will aim at the creation of
convergence, coherence and synergies between the proposed actions. The
intended output is a catalogue of actions to facilitate access to
resources information that could be implemented (almost) immediately, a
skeleton plan for longer term actions, and firm commitment from key
players to make these things happen.
Target audience
Representatives of parties that could play a key role in providing
access to resources information, such as (but not limited to)
- Resources distribution agencies, e.g. LDC and ELDA/ELRA
- Professional organisations, e.g. ACL, ISCA, and their regional
branches, e.g. EACL, AACL, JACL, Asian NLP federation
- Networks and resources infrastructure projects, e.g. ENABLER, ISLE.
ELSNET
- Committees, e.g. ICWLR, COCOSDA
- National resources or infrastructure projects, e.g. Technolangue,
Collate
- International actions, e.g. OLAC
Invited and submitted papers
We expect to invite some 20 representatives to give their presentations,
but in addition we are issuing an open call for papers addressing the
resources information problem and possible solutions. These papers
will be reviewed in the usual way.
Workshop Format
It will be a two-day workshop, with invited and submitted presentations
in the mornings, and topical panels and round table discussion in the
afternoons.
Programme Committee
As this workshop is jointly organised by ELSNET and ENABLER (two EU
funded projects aimed at providing collaboration infrastructures), we have
invited all ca 60 members of the ELSNET and ENABLER Boards to constitute
the core programme committee. We may want to invite additional members
from Asia and other parts of the world in order to ensure sufficient
geographical coverage.
The workshop will be jointly chaired by Steven Krauwer (ELSNET) and
Nicoletta Calzolari/Antonio Zampolli (ENABLER)
Historical note
This workshop can be seen as a follow-up of the workshop organised at
ACL2000 in Hong Kong, entitled 'Towards infrastructures for global
collaboration'. One of the conclusions of this workshop was that the field
of language resources would offer good opportunities for collaborative
actions, and the first concrete goal was the creation of an international
resources federation, a first step towards which is now embodied by the
proposal to set up an International Committee for Written Language
Resources ICWLR.
The workshop should lead to the definition of concrete actions to be
carried out under the auspices of ICWLR, in collaboration with other
organisations.
Contact info
Steven Krauwer (steven.krauwer@elsnet.org)
ELSNET (http://www.elsnet.org)
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