In your hands you have the first issue of CLARIN Newsletter, a publication initiated and supported by CLARIN — an acronym for the Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure, which is a combination of collaborative projects and coordination and support actions, registered at the EU under the number FRA-2007-2.2.1.2. This publication is planned to appear 4 times per year, both electronically and on paper, at least for the lifetime of the preparatory activities. The electronic version can be accessed by anyone on the project’s site at www.clarin.eu. On demand, it can be e-mailed to subscribers. The subscription information and forms can be found on the Newsletter section of the CLARIN site. On paper it will be distributed mainly during main language technology and humanities and social sciences events, and only occasionally it will be sent by mail (no budget is put aside for this).
We want this newsletter to be a publication where people can find the latest news on CLARIN advances and where they can tell their experiences or express opinions. The nice thing about CLARIN is that it facilitates scientific collaboration among people that work in domains which were considered until recently as distant as the Earth’s poles. This is the case of humanities and social sciences, on one hand, and computer science, on the other. They will meet in CLARIN for the common enterprise of finding the most appropriate ways in which language resources, whether they are expressed in speech, in text, or multimedia, can be better offered to scientists and to the public at large. In order for this to happen, we invite you to contribute in this Newsletter in two ways: either as a correspondent editor — therefore sending us periodically news from your scientific community, being it your country, your institute or your group, or as an occasional author.
This first issue, of a series which we hope to include 12 of them (the CLARIN preparatory phase extends from January 2008 till December 2010), aims at offering the first contact to scientists with the CLARIN world. You have just turn the page on which Steven Krauwer, the project coordinator, presented the CLARIN mission in the larger context of the ESFRI action. Martin Wynne, who is the port-parole and liaison with the DARIAH (www.dariah.eu) project in CLARIN, tries to convince you why a new infrastructure to deal with resources and tools is required by humanists and social scientists. We have dedicated page 4 to two categories of scientists dealing with resources: consumers and producers. In this issue these two voices belong to János László, which brings a motivation for IT needs in social psychology, and Max Silberztein, the developer of the NooJ tool, which was at the very heart of the work reported by János László. The central pages are dedicated to the CLARIN kick-off meeting, hosted by MPI and the Nijmegen City Hall, from 17 to 19 March 2008. Some meetings in which the CLARIN idea took gradually shape are also briefly described. We have thought that many of our readers would like to know in more details the CLARIN structure and how are its activities organized. This is why we have offered the following 4 pages to members of the Executive Board.
First, Peter Wittemburg makes a presentation of the CLARIN organization, and then all coordinators of the CLARIN working packages WP2-WP8, minus WP4 which does not exist, describe their specific activities. The last page, now and in all further issues, is dedicated to a presentation of events, most significant for CLARIN, over a period of 6 months in advance.
Enjoy your reading!
