Native Languages Center
Language Documentation Workshop
Module 4:
Supporting the Work
- Module 4 Progress57%
Collaboration Questions: Whose academic work does this benefit and how?
When thinking about academic collaborations it’s important to consider the role this work might play for the external partner. Below are some questions to consider/ask when developing partnerships with external academic institutions.
What are the constraints on the academic side?
Language work might be used by external scholars as Masters’ thesis or PhD Dissertation project; as part of building a portfolio that a faculty member will use in order to earn tenure, or even as part of independent study courses with students. This will need to be considered and if it impacts your project or aspects of data sovereignty, ownership, etc. You will want to ensure that a partner does not want to fund-raise or profit off of the work.
Are there time constraints?
When working with an academic partner, you will want to consider if you are bound to working on their timeline (academic year, semester, etc.). Further, most university scholars are pressured by their schools to use their work with you as part of public relations, advertising and fund-raising for their school. If you need those activities to be limited or handled differently, say so – and be willing to walk away if the academic partner won’t or can’t accommodate your needs and priorities.
Are there possible cultural or political mismatches?
It’s also important to think about the politics of collaborations at home. You may want to ask outside scholarly partners to refrain from engaging with the work in a way that makes it appear they are in more control of the project than they are. The partnership will benefit from you being clear about the negative ramifications of their behavior if they act in a way that is more consistent with their external scholarly culture than with your project’s or community’s needs and values.
Get Agreements in Writing!
- Memoranda of Understanding
- Policies and Procedures
- Shared Principles, Goals, and Values
It’s always best practice to make agreements with external scholarly partners in writing. This can include the creation of formal memoranda of understanding, the creation of written and shared policies and procedures, and statements of shared principles, goals and values. Written agreements help your external partners to support you when it’s time to ask their universities for support or accommodation for your project. They also establish clear boundaries for the project and role of the external partner.
Example: Coeur d’Alene Archive
Here is a successful example of long-term collaboration between a tribal community and outside academic partners and the importance of having a strong MOU. As detailed below, the project shifted a few times due to reorganizations at the university partner level, but with a strong MOU, the project has been maintained and usable by the community.
This project is a 25-year collaboration between the Coeur d’Alene Language Programs, Indiana University Fort Wayne, and the University of Arizona. The project began with Shannon Bischoff’s graduate work with the Coeur d’Alene language and the Tribal Language Programs. Originally at University of Montana, Shannon’s linguistic work utilized documentary materials that were available to the academic community but not to the Tribe or its citizens. In collaboration with the manager of the Tribe’s language programs, a project of digitization and web- publication of those documentary materials was initiated, and the first version of the repository came online in 2009. That version was supported by the University where Shannon worked at the time, the University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez, who provided server space among other resources that the Tribe was not able to provide. When Shannon left Mayaquez to take a job at what was then Indiana University Purdue University Fort Wayne. The project participants were able to secure server space at IUPUFW, and move the resources there from Mayaguez just before a catastrophic hurricane destroyed their infrastructure (and much more).
Since 2009, the resource has been completely redesigned and rewritten twice. All three versions are still available online, because of the agreements that the Tribe and Shannon were able to secure, in writing, from IUPUFW – which has since reorganized an renamed itself as Indiana University Fort Wayne. During the reorganizations in Indiana, there were at least three occasions when the University tried to suspend support for the project as what was to them a small (and not significant) part of a set of technology re-organizations. Each time, the MOU – saved and kept handy by the project team – ensured that the project was not eliminated. This, unfortunately, can be a common set of circumstances in academics – with leadership changes comes institutional forgetfulness. Nobody on the University Administration side was trying to break agreements, but they needed the team to have that written record so that they would be able to keep continuity of the project even when their own leadership and technological landscapes were changing.
To learn more about this project, you can visit their website at: https://thecolrc.org/