Shifting the Focus of Metadata Training to Community User Needs in Language Archives

Repositories of digital collections focusing on languages and cultures are known as digital language archives. In the past 15 years, they have grown exponentially, due to language documentation and revitalization work. Materials resulting from these efforts – mostly housed by GLAM institutions, including in community-centered digital collections – are valuable for education, research, and empowering communities. Information professionals are responsible for organizing and describing them to facilitate access and discovery. A gap exists between the ways these information resources are usually organized and expectations of language communities’ members and language preservation and revitalization researchers. GLAM-stewarded community language archive items possess uncommon for other information resources attributes and relationships of importance to target audiences. Their metadata representation – and specific information needs of intended audiences – are not yet in the mainstream GLAM curriculum. The paper describes addressing this training gap as part of the advanced graduate metadata course.