November 2013 Newsletter

Friday, November 15, 2013

New Corpora

Chinese Treebank 8.0

CSC Deceptive Speech 

Announcements

Invitation to Join for Membership Year (MY) 2014
Membership Year (MY) 2014 is open for joining!  We would like to invite all current and previous members of LDC to renew their membership as well as welcome new organizations to join the Consortium.  For MY2014, LDC is pleased to maintain membership fees at last year’s rates – membership fees will not increase.  Additionally, LDC will extend discounts on membership fees to members who keep their membership current and who join early in the year.

The details of our early renewal discounts for MY2014 are as follows:

  • Organizations who joined for MY2013 will receive a 5% discount when renewing. This discount will apply throughout 2014, regardless of time of renewal. MY2013 members renewing before Monday, March 3, 2014 will receive an additional 5% discount, for a total 10% discount off the membership fee.
  • New members as well as organizations who did not join for MY2013, but who held membership in any of the previous MYs (1993-2012), will also be eligible for a 5% discount provided that they join/renew before March 3, 2014.

Publications for MY2014 are still being planned; here are the working titles of data sets we intend to provide:

  • 2009 NIST Language Recognition Evaluation
  • Callfriend Farsi Speech and Transcripts
  • GALE data – all phases and tasks
  • Hispanic-English Speech
  • MADCAT Phase 4 Training
  • MALACH Czech ASR
  • NIST OpenMT Five Language Progress Set

In addition to receiving new publications, current year members of  LDC also enjoy the benefit of licensing older data at reduced costs; current year for-profit members may use most data for commercial applications.

Spring 2014 LDC Data Scholarship Program
Applications are now being accepted through Wednesday, January 15, 2014, 11:59PM EST for the Spring 20143 LDC Data Scholarship program! The LDC Data Scholarship program provides university students with access to LDC data at no-cost. During previous program cycles, LDC has awarded no-cost copies of LDC data to over 35 individual students and student research groups.

This program is open to students pursuing both undergraduate and graduate studies in an accredited college or university. LDC Data Scholarships are not restricted to any particular field of study; however, students must demonstrate a well-developed research agenda and a bona fide inability to pay. The selection process is highly competitive.

The application consists of two parts:

(1) Data Use Proposal. Applicants must submit a proposal describing their intended use of the data. The proposal should state which data the student plans to use and how the data will benefit their research project as well as information on the proposed methodology or algorithm.

Applicants should consult the LDC Catalog for a complete list of data distributed by LDC. Due to certain restrictions, a handful of LDC corpora are restricted to members of the Consortium. Applicants are advised to select a maximum of one to two datasets; students may apply for additional datasets during the following cycle once they have completed processing of the initial datasets and publish or present work in some juried venue.

(2) Letter of Support. Applicants must submit one letter of support from their thesis adviser or department chair. The letter must verify the student's need for data and confirm that the department or university lacks the funding to pay the full Non-member Fee for the data or to join the Consortium.

For further information on application materials and program rules, please visit the LDC Data Scholarship page.

Students can email their applications to the LDC Data Scholarship program. Decisions will be sent by email from the same address.

The deadline for the Spring 2014 program cycle is January 15, 2014, 11:59PM EST.

LDC to Close for Thanksgiving Break
LDC will be closed on Thursday, November 28, 2013 and Friday, November 29, 2013 in observance of the US Thanksgiving Holiday.  Our offices will reopen on Monday, December 2, 2013.