Building an Open Language Archives Community on the DC Foundation

The Open Language Archives Community is an international partnership of institutions and individuals that is creating a worldwide virtual library of language resources. We report on the development of OLAC metadata as a specialization of Dublin Core metadata and then describe the interoperability framework in which the metadata is validated, disseminated and aggregated. We also discuss the community-centered process by which OLAC standards and practices are created and maintained. In each of these three areas, metadata, interoperability, and process, we show how OLAC began with a model that was too cumbersome to implement then found a new formulation which worked in practice. By reporting on this experience of metadata in practice, we hope to show how a specialist community can address its resource discovery needs by building on the Dublin Core foundation. A revised version of this paper will appear in: Hillmann and Westbrooks (editors) Metadata in Practice: A Work in Progress, ALA Editions, 2004.