[open-linguistics] survey of interest in a potential new catalog of annotation resources

[Mark Finlayson]

Dear Colleagues,

I am seeking community feedback and expressions of interest regarding a 
proposal for a new type of annotation resource catalog. The idea is 
described briefly in the appended text, and was proposed, discussed, and 
endorsed at an NSF-funded workshop <http://uat2015.cs.fiu.edu/> held 
last year (described in detail in this technical report 
<https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/105270>).

If you have ever done linguistic annotation and have a moment, I would 
very much appreciate if you would fill out this very short survey (3 
questions):

http://online.cs.fiu.edu/survey/index.php?sid=74491&lang=en

Responses may remain anonymous, if you wish. If you have any questions, 
please get in touch. Best regards,

Mark

> It is our observation that, despite several ongoing cataloging 
> efforts, researchers still struggle to find, understand, and evaluate 
> the annotation resources available to support their particular 
> annotation tasks (e.g., software tools, schema, and corpora). We 
> propose to develop a new catalog that addresses this problem, which 
> will add important new metadata on top of existing catalogs (e.g., 
> those maintained by LDC, ELRA, OLAC, etc.,with whom we will partner) 
> as well as adding many additional uncatalogued resources.
>
> The key feature of the catalog is to provide new, sophisticated, and 
> formal metadata that allows sophisticated and accurate search for 
> linguistic-annotation-related resources. The metadata will also enable 
> enhanced evaluation of the relevance of resources for a particular 
> annotation task. This metadata is not currently captured anywhere, 
> except insofar as it is described informally in academic publications. 
> The metadata will also enable automatic inference as to what resources 
> are relevant to which linguistic phenomena and annotation tasks. On 
> the front-end the catalog will be a website: it will list linguistic 
> annotation tools, annotation schema and guidelines, and corpora. On 
> the back-end, it will capture formal relationships between these items 
> in specially designed metadata schemes and description languages, 
> which will enable sophisticated search by linguistic phenomenon, 
> software capability, and semantic interoperability.
>
> The catalog will also incorporate a number of useful features:
>
>   * *Wizard Interface for Novices*, that will guide novice users (such
>     as undergraduates, young graduate students, or researchers new to
>     the field) to the tools, schemes, data, and best practices most
>     appropriate for their task.
>   * *Free Text Reviews* which, like modern online shopping sites, will
>     allow researchers to help others evaluate resources.
>   * *Archive of Abandoned Resources*, providing a
>     download-site-of-last-resort for resources that have lost their homes.
>   * *Streamlined Intake and Archiving*, which will allow researchers
>     to quickly and easily add their newly-developed resources to the
>     catalog to enable other researchers to more easily find and cite
>     their resources, as well as to comply with data archiving
>     requirements by funding agencies (e.g., the NSF Data Management Plan).
>
> This idea was proposed and endorsed by a group of 23 researchers in 
> linguistic annotation who gathered at an NSF-funded workshop 
> <http://uat2015.cs.fiu.edu/> held in March 2015 (described in detail 
> in this technical report 
> <https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/105270>). We will be soon 
> seeking NSF funding to support the implementation of the idea.
>

_________________
Mark A. Finlayson
Assistant Professor, FIU SCIS
11200 SW 8th Street, ECS Room 362, Miami, FL 33199
+1.305.348.7988 (office); +1.617.515.0708 (mobile);markaf at fiu.edu
.

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