E-LISThe sound library : sound documents and collections as means of recovering and protecting endangerred languagesEdgardoCivalleroauthorOral tradition is still a strong mean of communicating information and knowledge, not only among traditional peoples or in rural areas, but also inside urban societies. Oral transmission, besides of perpetuate intangible cultural heritage, compels to the prolix and creative use of the own language. By employing the words of native idioms, a specific culture can be expressed in all its richness. By this spoken process, illiterate societies –human groups lacking writing systems and therefore, lacking books- try to preserve their cultural store, currently threatened by the pressures of dominant cultures (mass-media, official education and religion, etc.). Sounds allow memory to survive, even under strong influences. Sound reservoires and documents, collected and managed by libraries, could become powerful tools for the study, preservation and revitalization of languages, specially minority, indigenous and endangered idioms. By using audiovisual technologies, linguistic diversity could be protected and the fulfillment of language and human rights, encouraged and accomplished. However, the management of oral resources has not been widely developed inside the theoretical frame of Library & Information Sciences (LIS). In fact, a general absence of concepts, techniques, operational tools and methodologies concerning these special sources can be detected in Librarianship. Even if elements coming from History and Sociology are used, there is an important lack of specific work of LIS in this area. Experiences in the generation of oral libraries in aboriginal communities in Chaco region (northeastern Argentina) provide(d) wide information on important issues related to the work with spoken documents: recording and interviewing, catalogation, transcription, support materials, physical organization, linguistic studies, documental analysis, diffusion and intellectual rights on contents. General information on these topics is provided in this paper, aiming at initiating, through the examples of such experiences, the development of specific tools, terms, theories and methods for oral documents by LIS.BZ. None of these, but in this section.2005Conference Paper

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