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1311 Dwinelle Hall, UC Berkeley

scoil-ling@berkeley.edu
phone : 510-642-8891
(less reliable than email
due to irregular staffing)

The Survey of California and other Indian Languages

    Visits to use the Survey’s collection can be arranged using the contact information given above. Because the Survey is staffed irregularly, it is important to get in touch in advance so that someone will be available to assist you. Before your visit, it can be helpful to spend some time searching the California Language Archive online catalog (described below) in order get a sense of which materials you want to work with. Some of them may be available online, and you might be able to save yourself the effort of visiting the archive in person! Survey assistants are also happy to help you find materials relevant to the language you’re interested in.
 
    Launched in 2011, the California Language Archive (CLA) is an online resource providing information and digital access to materials held by the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages and the Berkeley Language Center. The CLA also includes catalog information about sound recordings in the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum, but the recordings themselves are not available online.
 
    Users can search for materials by language, by people involved in creating them (speakers or researchers), or by the location where they were created. Search results will indicate when an item has digital content (sound files or images of pages) available online. To access digital content, users must create an account here.
 
    A few recordings have access restrictions that prevent them being freely available on the internet. To find out about such access restrictions or to ask other questions about the Berkeley Language Center’s (BLC) holdings, contact the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages :
 
Survey of California and Other Indian Languages

1311 Dwinelle Hall, UC Berkeley

email: scoil-ling@berkeley.edu

phone: 510-642-8891 (less reliable than email due to irregular staffing)

website: http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~survey/

 
 
    Established over half a century ago as the first state-funded institution devoted to California’s indigenous languages, the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages has evolved into a twenty-first-century research center. Closely affiliated with the Department of Linguistics at UC Berkeley, the Survey combines a traditional paper archive (now also increasingly available online) with ongoing documentation projects in an effort to preserve indigenous linguistic and cultural knowledge for future generations.
 
    An essential part of the Survey’s mission is to find ways of making our collection available to people throughout the state (and world). Documentary material can be preserved for posterity, but it is useful only if people can find what they’re looking for. Items in the Survey’s collection must be easy to discover and as easy as possible to use. For indigenous language material a good access system is especially important, partly because of the importance language revitalization can have for cultural identity revival and partly because some users may lack the financial resources to come to Berkeley on extended research trips to visit archives.
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