DELAMAN Award Process Manual

The DELAMAN Franz Boas prize is awarded every two years in odd numbered years, starting in 2017. The award recognises junior scholars and language documenters for documentation work based on multimedia collections of endangered languages that are publicly accessible in their archival deposits. The awardee receives $500 and travel costs to present at a relevant conference, such as ICLDC in Hawaii. The aim of the award is to support the creation of an incentive structure and academic recognition for language documentation work and to enforce best practices in language documentation that include creation of video-rich and publically accessible collections.

Award Committee

The Award Committee (AC) will consist of 4 DELAMAN board members or willing staff (of the DELAMAN archives) nominated by a board member; the AC may include ex officio board members. At least one AC member (and preferably 2) should have served on the previous AC for continuity; that person will serve as chair of the committee.

Each submission must be evaluated by at least 3 AC members. AC members will have a Conflict Of Interest (COI) with any submission from their own archives, and in the case of ex officio members, the archives of their current or previous affiliations. Thus, some submissions might be evaluated by 4 AC members while others will be evaluated by only 3.

Evaluation Criteria

The evaluation of collections is challenging as the collections differ greatly from each other. Below you will find the general overarching questions and some concrete features to consider in the evaluation process

How SIGNIFICANT is the collection? Consider

  • academic significance of its content (for areal, historical, or typological linguistics or for ethnography, music, folklore, etc.);
    • significance for theory, method, and practices of documentary linguistics;
    • its significance for the community from which it comes.

Overall, is this collection OUTSTANDING. (And this might best be expressed by giving a ranking among collections, and also, perhaps, setting a minimal bar, i.e., “I’d be happy/not happy for this collection to win a Boas award).

Below you find features that the committee should consider when evaluating the nominated collections:

  • Does the submission conform to our specifications:
    • Is the submitter a ‘junior scholar’ as defined in the call (PhD award no more than 6 years prior to award date; early career documenters employed less than 5 years)?
    •  Is the language endangered/extinct?
    • Is most of the collection in a DELAMAN archive?
    • Is the collection public/open-access, or if not, is there a good enough explanation for why it is not that we might still want to proceed?
    • Is the collection a multimedia collection (consisting of video and audio data, as well as secondary resources)?
  • Quality and quantity of primary resources
    • audio recordings
    • video recordings
    • photos
    • genres, variety and richness
    • topics/themes, variety and richness
  • Quality and quantity of secondary resources
    • transcription (what type and how much?)
    • translation (what type, how much, into which languages, are they accessible to linguists, community, etc.?)
    • annotation (depth)
    • are the analysis available in accessible digital formats (e.g., Flex, Toolbox, ELAN)
  • Quality of the archival deposit itself
    • Rich metadata (can you find stuff?)
    • Landing page (if applicable)
    • Well contextualised information

Timeline

Below you will find a timeline with the steps to be taken for the award procedure.

ODD YEARS

15th July

DELAMAN president confers with relevant conference organizer (e.g., ICLDC) in order to ensure funding for travel award is included in conference funding package.

15th September (No later than 15th September)

DELAMAN president solicits volunteers from the DELAMAN member archives to serve on the Award Committee (AC).

15th October                

DELAMAN president determines committee.

15th October- 15th November:  

Committee decides on procedures and

EVEN YEARS

15th January                 

AC send out reminder about call for submissions.

15th March                   

AC send out reminder about call for submissions.

15th May          

AC send out reminder about call for submissions.

01st June                      

AC checks submissions and decides if call should be extended.

If call should be extended:

15th June                     

AC extends deadline (if not enough applications received).

Send out updated call with extended deadline to DELAMAN archives to revise their websites.

Send out updated call with extended deadline to:

  • LINGUIST LIST
  • RNLD
  • LINGTYP
  • SSILA
  • (Others as determined useful)

15th June (July)             

Close online submission form.

Send out access information for submission form to committee.

Committee members determine COIs they might have with any nominees (COIs include any academic relationship [advisor-advisee, same institution, co-authors, etc.] in addition to the DELAMAN archive COI).

If COI is present, the other 3 award committee members review and rate.

Review deadline is 30 August.

30th August – 10th September

Review deadline.

Actions to be taken by chair of AC:

  • Request rating from Award committee
  • Combine ratings
  • Discuss ratings
  • Decide on Awardee

10th September

AC Chair informs DELAMAN president of nomination of awardee.

AC writes notification emails for successful and unsuccessful applicants. (See email templates below)

15th September

Chair sends out notification of award and non-award to applicants.

AC organises presentation location and procedure (ICLDC, TYPO conference).

Inform conference organizing committee about selection and request presentation slot in program for DELAMAN award.

15th October

Award announcement is posted on DELAMAN website.

Send announcement to DELAMAN archives to be announced on their websites.

Send out updated call with extended deadline to:

  • LINGUIST LIST
  • RNLD
  • LINGTYP
  • SSILA
  • (Others as determined useful)

15th November            

AC collects $500 from participating archives and sends to board member who will present the award.

ODD YEARS

15th January                 

Determine which DELAMAN member will present the award and transfer $500 to him/her.

Late February/early March

Awardee presentation at ICLDC, Manoa, HI, or other relevant conference.

Email templates

Email notification to Award winner

On behalf of the Digital Endangered Languages and Musics Archiving Network, I am pleased to inform you that you have been selected to receive the DELAMAN Award, in recognition of your outstanding language documentation collection, NAME OF COLLECTION, housed at the NAME OF ARCHIVE. The Award and the Honorable Mentions will be posted on the DELAMAN website shortly. Your DELAMAN Award certificate is attached to this email.

The award consists of a cash payment of US$500 (payment details to be arranged later) and an invitation to speak about your collection at the International Conference on Language Documentation & Conservation (ICLDC), to be held (VIRTUALLY/in Honolulu, Hawaii) INSERT DATES (INSERT CONFERENCE URL). (POSSIBLY OMIT:If you are able to attend, the award will be officially presented to you during the conference.)

The conference organizers will (THIS PART SUBJECT TO CHANGE: reimburse travel costs up to US$1500 and waive conference registration fees). Please let us know as soon as possible if you will be able to attend ICLDC, preferably no later than October 31. Please also supply a tentative title for your short talk (20 minutes +  5 minutes for questions), as well as a 50-word abstract for publication in the conference program.

As noted in the nomination form, as a condition of the award we ask that you write a collection guide, to be published in an appropriate venue. If you have not already written such a guide, we recommend that you consult:

Sullivant, Ryan. 2020. Archival description for language documentation collections. Language Documentation & Conservation 14: 520-578. http://hdl.handle.net/10125/24949

Sincerely, (NAME OF AC CHAIR)

Email notification to Honorable mentions

On behalf of the Digital Endangered Languages and Musics Archiving Network, I am pleased to inform you that you have been selected to receive an Honorable Mention for the DELAMAN Award, in recognition of your outstanding language documentation collection housed at the NAME OF ARCHIVE. The Award and the Honorable Mentions will be posted on the DELAMAN website shortly, and they will be announced at the International Conference on Language Documentation & Conservation (ICLDC), to be held (VIRTUALLY/in Honolulu, Hawaii) INSERT DATES (INSERT CONFERENCE URL). Your Certificate of Honorable Mention is attached to this email.

If you have not already written an article-length guide to your collection, we encourage you to do so, and we recommend that you consult:

Sullivant, Ryan. 2020. Archival description for language documentation collections. Language Documentation & Conservation 14: 520-578. http://hdl.handle.net/10125/24949

Sincerely, (NAME OF AC CHAIR)

Email notification to unsuccessful applicants

We are writing to inform you that the selection panel of the DELAMAN Award has decided to grant the award to NAME OF WINNER for the NAME OF COLLECTION in NAME OF ARCHIVE. The review process this year was the most difficult yet due to the exemplary collections that were nominated, including yours. While your collection was not selected as the winning collection, it was an excellent contribution to the field of language documentation and archiving. 
Thank you again for your submission.

Sincerely, (NAME OF AC CHAIR)

Email notification to non-qualifying collections

Thank you for applying for the DELAMAN Award. We did not consider your nomination because you have not deposited a language documentation collection in a DELAMAN archive, which is a crucial requirement for this award. Please have a look at the collection of the winner for this year or last year. 

Sincerely, (NAME OF AC CHAIR)