There is an international documentation centre on the world's estimated
6,000 currently used languages under the Summer School of Linguistics at
Dallas (presumably Univ. TX) which publishes regular listings.  My copy
of further info. is currently with a research student working on minority
languages and cultural policy in Barcelona so sorry I cannot sent exact
details just at the moment - but someone else may be able to help with
further info on Dallas and its classification etc. - otherwise I should
be able to help when back from holiday in early September.



Patrick Boylan
Arts Policy & Management, City University, London

====================


On Mon, 14 Aug 1995, Jennifer Punnett wrote:

> At the Horniman Museum we are in the process of setting up a
> computerised inventory of all of our collections (many of which are
> ethnographic).   Many of the fields - museum number, object type,
> method of acquisition, geo-political groupings have already been
> established and are working well.
>
> I have been asked to create a controlled set of fields to contain info
> relating to ethno-linguistic groupings (which must compliment the
> existing geo-political groupings) and I am feeling a bit swamped.
> At present, there are four controlled geo-political fields:
>
>         Continent       Sub-Continent           Country         Province
> eg      Asia            South Asia              India           Assam
>
>
> There is also a free, fifth field to contain any other geographical
> info.
>
> For the ethno-linguistic groupings, I am envisiging a three-tier system:
>
>         Americas        NW Coast        Kwakiutl
>         Africa          N Africa        Tuareg
>
> but I would like to know how other institutions have arranged this kind
> of information before I go any further.
>
> -Do you think the above three levels are sensible?  Would they work?
>
> -Are there any 'ready-made' hierarchies available?
>
> -If so, how do I get hold of them?
>
> -What do you do with differing spellings - 'Asanti' and 'Ashanti'
>
> -How do you classify groupings such as 'Arab Culture Area'?
>
> If anyone has ANY suggestions, or general comments, I would be very
> interested to hear from you.
>
> --
> Jennifer Punnett, Documentation Assistant
> The Horniman Museum & Gardens
> 100 London Road, London SE23 3PQ, UK
> [log in to unmask]
>