Using the E-MELD School of Best Practices to create lasting digital documentation

The School of Best Practices is an online resource that describes how to create lasting digital documentation according to the standards developed by a community of linguists, archivists, and computer scientists. The School was developed as part of the NSF-sponsored E-MELD (Electronic Metastructure for Endangered Languages Data) project, an initiative undertaken to develop digital infrastructure for the documentation of endangered languages. Users of the School can access recommendations of digital best practices and simple instructions for using the technologies recommended. The School also offers case studies of exemplary digitization processes, and searchable databases of tools and bibliographic resources. This paper describes how to use the School in creating digital language documentation, emphasizing its role among existing documentation and archiving initiatives.