Endangered Languages Archive


The Endangered Languages Archive is a digital archive for materials on endangered languages, based at SOAS University of London. The Archive preserves digital collections, including audio and video recordings, of endangered languages around the world. ELAR is part of the worldwide community of language archives.

Archive

The collection currently contains over 400 deposits, the majority of which are the results of Endangered Languages Documentation Project documentation projects which are funded by the .
The catalogue of archived materials can be freely searched via the Open Languages Archives Community. The endangered languages collections at ELAR can be accessed free of charge.

Affiliations

The archive was originally funded in 2002 as part of a donation to SOAS by the Arcadia Fund to support the documentation of endangered languages, to train students and scholars in language documentation and to digitally preserve and publish the collections. Since 2015 ELAR is housed in and supported by the SOAS library. The ELAR office is in the SOAS main campus building near Russell Square. David Nathan was director during the first decade of the archive's existence until 2014, when the role was taken over by Mandana Seyfeddinipur, who is also head of ELDP.