Construction of an Infrastructure for Providing Users
with Suitable Language Resources
Hitomi Tohyama† Shunsuke Kozawa† Kiyotaka Uchimoto‡
Shigeki Matsubara† and Hitoshi Isahara‡†Nagoya University, Furo-cho, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya, 464-8601, Japan{hitomi,kozawa,matubara}@el.itc.nagoya-u.ac.jp‡National Institute of Information and Communications Technology
3-5 Hikari-dai, Seika-cho, Soraku-gun, Kyoto, 619-0289, Japan{uchimioto,isahara}@nict.go.jp

Abstract
Our research organization has been constructing a large scale database named
SHACHI by collecting detailed meta information on language resources (LRs) in
Asia and Western countries. The metadata
database contains more than 2,000 compiled LRs such as corpora, dictionaries,
thesauruses and lexicons, forming a large
scale metadata of LRs archive. Its metadata, an extended version of OLAC metadata set conforming to Dublin Core, havebeen collected semi-automatically. This
paper explains the design and the structureof the metadata database, as well as the realization of the catalogue search tool.

1Introduction

The construction of LRs such as corpora, dictionaries, thesauruses, etc., has boomed for years
throughout the world in its aim of encouraging
research and development in the main media ofspoken and written languages, and its importancehas also been widely recognized. Of the organizations willing to store and distribute LRs, there exist some consortia fulfilling their function such as
LDC1 , ELRA2 , CLARIN3 , and OLAC4 , in Westc 2008.
⃝Licensed under the Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/).
Some rights reserved.
1LDC:Linguistic Data Consortium,
http://www.ldc.upenn.edu/
2
ELRA: European LRs Association
3
CLARIN: Common Language Resources and Technologies Infrastructure, http://www.ilsp.gr/clarin eng.html
4
OLAC: Open Language Archives Community,
http://www.language-archives.org/

ern countries, and GSK5 which does so mainly inJapan. However, those released LRs are scarcely
connected with each other because of the difference between written and spoken language aswell as the difference between languages such
as Japanese, English, and Chinese (OLAC UserGuide, 2008).
This situation makes it difficult for researchers
and users to find LRs which are useful for their researches. In the meantime, by connecting systematically existing various LRs with Wrapper Program, the attempt to realize multilingual translation services has already begun (Ishida et al, 2008,
Hayashi et al, 2008). Moreover, since language information tags given to those LRs and their data
formats are multifarious, each LR is operated individually. As LR development generally entails
enormous cost, it is highly desirable that the research efficiency be enhanced by systematicallycombining those existing LRs altogether and extending them, which will encourage an efficientdevelopment of unprecedented LRs.
Our research organization has been constructing
a large scale metadata database named SHACHI6
by collecting detailed meta information on LRs
in Western and Asian countries. This research
project aims to extensively collect metadata suchas tag sets, formats, and usage information about
researches on those LRs. and recorded contents ofLRs existing at home and abroad and store themsystematically. Meanwhile, we have already developed a search system of LRs by the use of meta
information and are attempting the experiment ofwidely providing meta information on our stored5GSK: Gengo Shigen Kyokai; Language Resource Association, http://www.gsk.or.jp/
6
SHACHI: Metadata Database of Language ResourcesSHACHI, Shachi means “orca” in English.

Figure 1: A sample page of SHACHI catalogue (ex. Euro WordNet)

LRs to those from researchers to common users.
This metadata database has been now open to thepublic in the Web and allows every Internet user
to access it for the search and read information ofLRs at will.

2

Purpose of Metadata Database
Construction

The purpose of the construction of the database is
the following fivefold.
1. To store language resource metadata:
SHACHI semi-manually collects detailed
metadata of language resources and constructs their detailed catalogues. Figure 1
shows a sample page of a LR catalogue stored
in SHACHI (ex. Euro WordNet). The catalogue provides more detailed meta information than other LR consortia do.
2. To systematize language resource metadata: Language resource ontology is tentatively constructed by classifying types of language resources (in this paper, it is called “ontology”). Figure 2 shows an example of its
ontology. At the moment, it is under investigation what is the most useful and functional
ontology for users by developing some ontologies such as human-made ontology, semiautomatically produced ontology, and automatically produced ontology.

3. To make each language resource related
to each other: The detailed metadata enabled us to describe characteristics of eachlanguage resource and to expectably specify
relationships among language resources. Figure 3 shows a part of the SHACHI search
screen. It shows language resources found asa search result, the references to which theselanguage resources conform as well as otherlanguage resources whose formats are common to theirs.
4. To statistically investigate language resources: By statistically analyzing the metadata, users are able to grasp what kinds of language resources exist in different part of theworld and to understand current tendencies oflanguage resources which have been available
to the public.
5. To promote the distribution of language resources: Since this metadata database enables users to easily gain access to language
resources in accordance with their needs,
owing to fully equipped search functions,
SHACHI will be able to support an effectiveuse and an efficient development of language
resources.
Some 2,000 resources of metadata have alreadybeen collected in the database so far and they will
be enlarged by a further 3,000. To that end, it ismetadata are fed into the database by semiautomatic means of importing.
3.2 Extensions of Metadata Element

Figure 2: Automatically produced ontology

Since users sometimes search for LRs without aclear objective, it is necessary for language resource providers to construct language resource
ontology. This database conforms to the OLAC
metadata set which is based on 15 kinds of fundamental elements of Dublin Core7 and constitutes an extended vision of OLAC with 19 newly
added metadata elements which were judged to
be indispensable for describing characteristics ofLRs. SHACHI provides usage information about
how and in which situation language resource researchers utilized each language resource, whichis also important for users. The usage information about LRs is automatically retrieved from academic article databases (Kozawa et al, 2008). (See
“Utilization” in Figure1).
3.3 Systematic Storage of LRs

indispensable for us to work in cooperation withlanguage resource consortia at home and abroad
and to take the initiative in contributing to Asian
language resources.

3SHACHI Metadata Set

3.1 Policy for Collecting Metadata
The LRs which our metadata database storesshould satisfy the following conditions:• Those resources should be stored in a digitalformat.
• Those resources should be one of the following: corpus, dictionary, thesaurus, or lexicon.
(Numeric data are not considered to be thesubject of collection for SHACHI.)• Those resources should be collected from English websites and its data must be open to thepublic.

Clear description of the relations among LRs canbe applied to the efficient development of LRs
and search tools for common users of database.
Figure 2 shows ontology generated through automatic means, based on language resource metadata
stored in SHACHI. We first surveyed the frequencyof possible values of metadata element choicesand
generated the ontology by hierarchicalizing meta
elements of our meta categories. While ontology
can be constructed in various ways from different
standpoints, our ontology is particularly designed
for users to enable to find them efficiently by following the hierarchical classes of our ontology.

4 Search Tools for Providing
Users-Oriented Information
Figure 3 shows a screen image of a search result through SHACHI. This section discusses threesearch functions provided in SHACHI.
4.1 Three Types of Search Functions• Those resources should be created by research institutions, researchers, or businessorganizations. (Developed tools such as facetsearch.)

For the purpose of facilitating users of this metadata database to find their intended language resource catalogues, SHACHI provides three searchfunctions:LRs metadata database SHACHI covers meta
information provided by LR consortia such as
ELRA, LDC, and OLAC whose more detailed

1. Keyword search function: This tool is suitable for users who have clear images to search
7

Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, http://dublincore.org/

Figure 3: Catalogue search tool

for specified LRs and a technical knowledgeof language processing. It allows them to input keywords as they want and to search allwords stored in SHACHI metadata archive.
2. Facet search function: This tool is suitablefor users who have a vague idea of what kindof LR they want. It is equipped with a choiceof 15 kinds of metadata elements selectedfrom the SHACHI metadata set. The users
narrow down the target LRs one by one inorder to find the intended one. For example,
with one click on age , three choices suchas Children s utterance? , Adults utterance? and Both are OK? will be shown.
3. Ontology search function: This tool was developed by adopting the idea acquired by systematizing LRs registered in SHACHI. Whenusing the ontology search function, users findthe intended LRs by following the vertical relationship of the ontology. It was ascertainedthat ontology search function tool had themerit of enabling users to discover LRs thathave not been ever found by keyword search
and facet search functions.

5Conclusion

In this paper, we reported on the design ofSHACHI, a metadata database of LRs now being developed, the expansion and construction of
metadata for it, and an actualization of a searchfunction. At present, it contains approximately
2,000 pieces of meta information on LRs suchas corpora, dictionaries and thesauruses. One ofSHACHI s characteristic features is that with acollection of tag sets, format samples, and usage information on LRs which is automatically retrieved from scholarly papers given to LRs. From
now on the SHACHI project is intended to promote
cooperation among other LRs consortia abroad aswell as in Japan and to take the initiative in contributing to the development of LRs in Asia.

References
Ishida,T., Nadamoto, A., Murakami,Y., Inaba, R. et al.
2008. A Non-Profit Operation Model for the Language Grid, In proceedings of the 1st International
Conference on Global Interoperability for language
Resources, pp.114-121.
Kozawa, S., Tohyama, H., Uchimoto, K., Matsubara,S., and Isahara. H. 2008. Automatic Acquisition ofUsage Infor-mation for Language Resources, In proceedings of the 6th edition of the Language Resources and Evaluation Conference.
OLAC (Open Language Archives Communi-ty), 2008.
Searching of OLAC Metadata: User Guide, http://www.language-archives.org/tools/search/searchDoc.html
Yoshihito Hayashi, Thierry Declerck, Paul Buitelaar,
Monica Monachini. 2008. Ontologies for a Global
Language Infrastructure, In proceedings of the 1stInternational Conference on Global Interoperability
for language Resources, pp.105-112.