In today’s rapidly changing landscape, collaborative works, sharing LRs and associated services, but also crowdsourcing have emerged as major trends within the LRT community. Within this context, ELRA thinks that identifying the members of this very broad community is critical to set up truly interactive exchanges/services and has decided to launch the Language Resources and Evaluation Forum.

What is the forum?

The forum is a large group of individuals which have to do with Language Resources and Evaluation and is open (and not limited) to: scientists, students or professors, involved in research activities in universities, small and medium companies or international groups; decision-makers or project managers in large public institutions, etc.

Who can join?

Anyone having to do with Language Resources and subscribing to the idea of "Fostering/Supporting” Language Resources and Evaluation worldwide is invited to join the Language Resources and Evaluation Forum.

How to join?

At first, each individual can subscribe to the LRE Forum through the registration to LREC 2012. A simple Yes/No question will be asked at Step1 of the registration process. The userid you will create to register to the conference will be used for all the (future) LRE Forum services. Then the subscription process will be extended and individuals will be able to join the Forum independently from LREC.

Subscribing to the LRE Forum is free.

Why join?

A unique userid and password will allow you to access a number of services such as:

• Download free resources of the ELRA Catalogue (all and only the free ones) from the ELRA-META-SHARE repository;
• LRE Map editing, access to LR Library, access to LRE Wiki of National Contact Points,… ;
• Upload resources on the ELRA and/or ELRA-META-SHARE repository, with support to document these resources (metadata, validation, etc.);
• Individual “friends in the Forum” will be represented by an “observer” to the Board of ELRA, with no voting rights, for one term of 2 years.

The content and number of services will evolve overtime.

For more information, answer to more specific questions or suggestions, please write to contact.lre-forum elda.org.

As an association, ELRA has been serving the HLT community for 17 years now with the missions of identifying/distributing Language Resources to the community, disseminating information on the field, and evaluating HLT systems.

A growing number of current ELRA activities, first of which the LREC Conference (with an increasing attendance), but also the Universal Catalogue, the LRE Map, the upcoming Language Library, the LRE Journal edited by Springer (with a growing number of submissions), the Legal Support Helpdesk, the support for LR producers, etc. are dedicated to the LRT community at large and not just to the ELRA members.