OLAC Role Vocabulary

Role is an attribute of both the Creator and Contributor elements. This document specifies the controlled vocabulary of the role attribute used by OLAC. The role attribute specifies the functional role of the entity named in the Creator or Contributor element in the creation of a given resource.

Should this refer only to someone who creates a single resource with multiple parts, such as a book of short stories, or can it be used to identify a person who produces a corpus of resources, which are probably archived separately?

A compiler of a book of short stories or a CD with several songs on it; a collector of a corpus of recordings in some language or on a given topic; a person who assembles a suite of software tools.

This term is commonly used by field linguists for the native speakers who work with them in describing and analyzing a language. They contribute their expertise in their native language to the resource, although their speech, sign, or writing may not appear directly in the resource.

A software programmer, designer, or analyst; a designer of a questionnaire or research task.

This role includes anyone whose role was editorial in nature, such as proof-readers, debuggers, testers, etc. It may overlap the Compiler role in some cases.

This role is intended for minor participants such as audience members, whose voices may be heard on a recording saying things like "oh, really". These interlocutors need not have been physically present. They could be participants in some form of long-distance communication, such as lurkers in an online discussion.

Performers differ from Speakers in that a performance is generally a planned, learned, or traditional work, defined in advance in terms of content or style. The performer delivers a rendition of this work, which may be performed by others at other times. The distinction between Performer and Speaker is subtle, being based on a subjective evaluation of the content of the resource.

A narrator of a traditional myth; a person performing a ceremony or delivering an oration or a sermon; native speakers recreating a traditional genre of speech, such as ritual greetings or insults; a singer or musician.

Speakers/signers are those whose voices/gestures predominate in a recorded or filmed resource. (This resource may be a transcription of that recording.) They differ from Performers in that the speech/sign that is recorded in the resource was not necessarily planned or learned in advance. Note that this distinction is based on the origin and content of the resource, and not on specific activities of the participant.

Participants in a recorded conversation, elicitation session, or informal narration would be termed Speaker/Signers. Audience members who do not participate beyond the occasional backchannel would be termed Participants.