At the end of the first year of the project, it seems to us that CLARIN has passed the maturity exam and is already on the lips of every builder of LT resources or tools in Europe. It is perhaps less known among the “consumers of LT”, which gives us a good hint about an area in which progress is clearly wanted.
The central topic in this issue is the new calls of interest for CLARINers. Indeed, these very days, new calls for research, have been launched in Europe, and we wanted to offer to our readers a short guide, seen through CLARIN eyes, to help you orientate through the calls, understand their philosophy, and prepare the making of consortia for applications.
With this context in mind, we have invited the Scientific Board member Dan Tufis , to open the issue by presenting the EC research horizon, as it is reflected in the new i2010 policy framework. Then, as CLARIN itself launches a call for collaboration with colleagues from the humanities and social sciences, we have asked Koenraad de Smedt and Tamás Váradi to comment on the context of this call. The text of the call is also included.
Closely connected to this call is how to show HSS researchers the advantages that they can gain from CLARIN in their daily research activities. A great challenge of the CLARIN preparatory phase is the definition of representative usage scenarios. This CLARIN activity, which is under development right now, is presented by Valeria Quochi, Lothar Lemnitzer and Marc Kemp-Snijders.
The space in the middle of the issue is, as usual, dedicated to new events which are considered important from the CLARIN perspective. Two very successful workshops organised by the end of 2008 and a European-level meeting, which happened in January 2009, occupy this space. The workshop organised by CLARIN as a WP2/WP5 joint event in October is commented on by Erhard Hinrichs and Peter Wittenburg, the D-Spin-CLARIN joint Workshop in Munich is illustrated by Núria Bel and Marc Kemp-Snijders, while Marko Tadić describes the Language Technology Days in Luxembourg.
Finally, the last several pages are reserved for reports by collaborators from CLARIN partners that bring the news from their countries. In this issue these are Hanne Fersøe, who is commenting the Danish CLARIN project, Eva Hajičová, giving a report on the Czech NLP tradition and horizon, and Dan Cristea, presenting the state-of-the-art in
LRT in Romania.
Enjoy the reading.
