This Saturday, the Internet Archive is hosting their first-ever RECORD-A-THON, a grassroots language documentation project where they’ll see how many different languages they can document in a single day.
IA’s goal is to capture 50 different languages and they’re depending on members of the community to stop by the Archive offices at 300 Funston at Clement to participate.
If you can’t make it in person, you can also participate remotely by providing a video or audio clip online. Just head over to the event page at Coveritlive.com
Linguists from the Rosetta Project and professional videographers from Mightyverse will be on site at the Internet Archive to document you and your friends speaking word lists, reading texts, and telling stories.
You can also document your language using tools like your mobile phone, digital camera, or laptop – just bring your device by the event and the IA will guide you through the documentation process. Or tune into the online broadcast to get all the details.
Check out Saturday’s full event schedule online, which includes a keynote address by Dr. Elizabeth Lindsey, world-renowned anthropologist, filmmaker, and National Geographic Fellow.
As an extra incentive to participate, the first 100 participants to arrive at the Internet Archive event will receive a commemorative Record-a-thon notebook by Levenger.com, packed with information about the event, and with lots of room to record your own experiences.
They’ll also have contests for both in-person and remote participants who upload recordings of the most languages, who are recorded speaking the most languages, and every submitted recording earns a chance to win an iPad 2.
What languages do you speak? Leave a comment to let us know. I bet we can cover at least a couple of dozen just from RichmondSFBlog readers!
Sarah B.