Services and Expertise

Language Archive Cologne (LAC) | Inquiries by email: ✉ | Helpdesk: ✉

The LAC is open as a repository to researchers from all disciplines who work with (annotated) audiovisual (language) data and use a compatible metadata model. Starting in 2013, the LAC was operated using the LAT software suite developed by the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (MPI-PL) in Nijmegen; in 2019, the technical infrastructure was replaced by developments from the BMBF collaborative project KA3. Currently, in addition to language recordings with a linguistic focus, the repository also includes songs from non-European cultures and recordings of oral literary traditions.

easy LAC (eLAC) | Inquiries by email: ✉

eLAC provides simplified, mobile-optimized, and multilingual access to the LAC’s data sets and was developed as a student project in collaboration with the Data Center for the Humanities (DCH) and the Regional Computing Center (RRZK). eLAC utilizes the interfaces on which the LAC is based. The implementation relies on the Angular framework and its modular structure. This allows individual media types to be displayed in a specific way using corresponding components.

Audio Services | Inquiries by email: ✉

The web-based audio analysis services developed as part of the BMBF collaborative project KA3 offer automatic transcription of German speech and, optionally, chapter detection based on this speech recognition.

AV Metadata | Email inquiries: ✉

The DCH has extensive experience working with metadata for AV speech data, metadata standards, and the modeling of audiovisual and other humanities resources. As part of CLARIN, DELAMAN, and the BMBF consortium project QUEST, we collaborate with other centers of excellence to develop and maintain industry and community standards. If you have any questions or encounter any issues while working with metadata, we are here to offer advice and support.

CLARIN Knowledge Center for Linguistic Diversity and Language Documentation (CKLD) | Helpdesk: ✉

The CKLD is a distributed center of excellence operated in collaboration with partners in Hamburg, London, and Berlin. The center serves as a one-stop resource for researchers, where member institutions pool their expertise to provide recommendations and information on current best practices, available resources, tools, and tutorials related to the collection, processing, and archiving of research data from language documentation, and offer training sessions and workshops that teach both foundational and specialized skills.