Aim of project: Creation of general web resource for language and speech sciences, under the aegis of ISCA and EACL
Limited time so implementation of existing resources rather than extensive acquisition of materials
Website development done by external commercial body so we need only to provide materials and design specifications for implementation and presentation
Review of material already collected and available in some format for our area
Listings of equipment used for phonetics education (collected by TN PHON group in 1998-99)
Available on web [http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/val/equipment.html]
Info provided: classification (e.g. phonation, acoustic analysis…), name of product, operating system, link to website of manufacturer wherever possible
GOOD points: some classification of materials and links to further information
BAD points: no product description, no quality evaluation, no indication of whether shareware or commercial product, not searchable, probably incomplete and somewhat outdated?
Inventory of Speech, Signal and Language Processing Tools (collected by TN CAL group in 1998?)
Available on web [http://crow.phon.ucl.ac.uk/wbt/calinv6.htm]
Info provided: name and brief description of software, operating system and size of program, usage of tools, link to website, contact name and email of product author…
GOOD points: brief description, link to further information, purpose of tool
BAD points: no classification? (listed as entered in database), not much consistency in terms of amount of information provided
Inventory of Course and Curriculum Information (collected by TN CAL group in 1998)
Available on web [http://crow.phon.ucl.ac.uk/wbt/calinv4.htm]
Info provided: brief description, URL, sometimes name of contact
GOOD points: provides links to curriculum information
BAD points: incomplete, not classified, out of date?
Listings of textbooks used in phonetics education (collected by TN PHON group in 1998)
Available on web [http://pan.hf.ntnu.no/socrates/textbooks.html]
Alphabetical listings of textbooks classified under set of topics (e.g. perception, acoustic phonetics…) + info about most cited textbooks in each category. Information obtained via questionnaire to 80 sites approx.
GOOD points: only available inventory of this kind? Gives some indication of which textbooks are most used?
BAD points: not searchable, no qualitative judgment on books, mix of old (unavailable?) and recent books, unattractively presented, no information on book content, generally out of date?…
Listings of ‘educational materials’ (collected by TN CAL group in 1998)
Available on web [http://crow.phon.ucl.ac.uk/wbt/calinv3.htm]
Short description and links. Mix of sites with specific demos or tutorials and sites with large sets of links to phonetics/speech sciences resources
GOOD points: links to available materials
BAD points: not searchable, disparate list of links, outdated…
Issues for discussion in Prague
Specification of Users and their requirements
Materials to be included (e.g., software for speech analysis, web-tutorials, web demos, curricula, textbook inventory, equipment inventory)
Presentation:
single resource, sets of separate inventories?
‘Style’ of presentation
Search facilities: how to search database(s), links to other sites covering same themes?….
Website navigation issues
Provide listings only or provide quality judgment…
Ways of ensuring materials are up-to-date?
Work to do in advance
Take a look at the various resources which are available for phonetics
Think about pros and cons of way in which materials are presented in the various databases which are available
Think about how you would like to see a database organised, what information you would like presented, how it could be searched, etc…
As Gerrit suggested, bring examples (screen printouts) of websites which ‘work’ and/or take a novel approach to data presentation, whatever their field…