We are very pleased to announce that Iceland officially joined CLARIN as a member!
Iceland has been involved with CLARIN for a number of years. In 2010 Iceland was as a member of the consortium of the CLARIN Preparatory Phase project, but without any funding. In November 2018 Iceland joined CLARIN ERIC as an observer and as of this February Iceland participates as a full member.
The Iceland CLARIN consortium is led by The Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies. Other institutions that currently comprise the Iceland CLARIN consortium are the following:
- The University of Iceland
- Reykjavik University
- National and University Library of Iceland
- National Archives of Iceland
- The Icelandic Language Council
- The Icelandic National Broadcasting Service
- Almannarómur - Centre for Language Technology
Eiríkur Rögnvaldsson, Professor Emeritus at the University of Iceland is the National Coordinator for Iceland.
The Árni Magnússon Institute has already established a Metadata Providing Centre (CLARIN C-Centre) which hosts metadata for Icelandic language resources and makes them available through CLARIN’s Virtual Language Observatory. The aim is to establish a Service Providing Centre (CLARIN B-Centre) which will provide both service and access to resources and knowledge.
The first resources and tools have already been archived in the CLARIN-IS repository and their metadata harvested by the . The main task of CLARIN-IS in the next months is to prepare the numerous language resources owned by the Árni Magnússon Institute for archiving in the repository. In the second half of this year, the plan is to start adding resources owned by other members of the consortium.
According to a contract between Almannarómur, Centre for Language Technology (a self-owned organization which has been commissioned to implement the Government-funded National Language Technology Programme) and the SÍM Language Technology Consortium which will carry out the research and development work necessary for the Programme, all deliverables of the National Language Technology Programme will be submitted to the CLARIN-IS repository. One of the main tasks of CLARIN-IS in the near future will be to review these tools and resources, edit them, approve, and distribute them under open licenses.
CLARIN-IS plans to cooperate with Almannarómur and with other European initiatives such as ELRC and ELG in promoting language technology by different means, such as national workshops and press releases. Towards the end of this year, CLARIN-IS will participate in Tour de CLARIN.