Writing a Corpus Cookbook

Martin Wynne
Oxford Text Archive
Arts and Humanities Data Service
13 Banbury Road
Oxford
OX2 6NN
martin@ota.ahds.ac.uk

This paper discusses the issues arising from the planning of a 'guide to
good practice' in 'developing linguistic corpora' for UK academics, a
project currently being undertaken at the Oxford Text Archive (OTA).
The OTA is a long-established facility supported by Oxford University, and
based within the Humanities Computing Unit. Since 1996, the OTA has been
working as a Service Provider for the national Arts and Humanities Data
Service (AHDS) to support academics working in all areas of literary and
linguistic studies in the UK.
The OTA seeks to address three key areas:
·	Collect, catalogue, preserve, and redistribute digital resources of
interest to those working in literary and linguistic studies within the UK's
Higher Education and FE communities. 
·	Develop appropriate licensing conditions and technical mechanisms
for the effective distribution of such resources. 
·	Promote good practice in the creation and use of such resources in
both research and teaching.
Following a study of the OTA's subject coverage and Collections Policy, it
was decided that additional support should be offered in the area of
Linguistics. Martin Wynne has been appointed to the post of Information
Officer (Linguistics) with a brief to improve the OTA's provision for
linguistics and to raise the profile of the OTA within this sector of the
academic community.
One of the key activities to be undertaken is the publication of an AHDS
Guide to Good Practice covering the development of linguistic corpora. This
paper reports on the experiences so far in planning and writing this book.
The following questions are addressed: 
1.	What is the guide for?
2.	Who is the guide for?
3.	What is the UK academic linguistics community? 
4.	What is good/best practice?
5.	How should the OTA service develop?
The fourth point above is addressed in the most detail. Specifically, the
question of what is best practice in digitising and/or encoding language
corpora is considered. Can software and hardware dependent solutions be
considered acceptable? Is the TEI the solution? How can we preserve the
integrity of the texts?
In view of the diversity of resources which are being and will be developed,
the advantages of an open, eclectic and non-prescriptive approach are
considered.