As a part of ILCAA, the Information Resources Center (irc-TUFS) was established in 1997 withan initial tenure of 10 years. Its main purpose is to process information resources of languages andcultures of Asia and Africa mainly in the form of storage, compilation, and publication with a view todevelop inter-institutional and international academic exchange.ILCAA has been enriching multipurpose databases of historical, ethnological, and social studies,while computerizing the data of Asian and African languages and analyzing each languagephonologically, syntactically and lexicologically. This database provides basic information on editingdictionaries and grammars of Asian and African languages, which is one of the most importantactivities of the Institute. It is accesible to the scholars throughout Japan. Computerized language datahave been collected for Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Fulani, Hausa, Hindi, Khmer, Korean, Manchu,Persian, Swahili, Thai, Tibetan, Yoruba. Meanwhile we have developed fonts for Arabic, Bengali,Burmese, Devanagari, Khmer, Korean, Mongolian, Tangut, Thai, Tibetan, and so on.With the above-mentioned activities as the basis, the Center is planning to organize and refine thetheoretical and applied aspects of the following: (a) Besides the language data mentioned above, the Institute has a large number of brochures, posters,photographs, 8-mm films, video tapes etc., containing linguistic, cultural and historical data.Accessing this data is cumbersome from within or from outside the Institute. Hence there is an urgentrequirement to organize the data with a view to make it accessible to the public.(b) For encouraging international inter-university studies, we are planning to have the databasesinternationally open and shared, as well as to set up an environment for research support based on thedatabase.(c) As a preparation for the basic organization of the contents and exchange, it is the urgent task toformalize the fields which have hardly had a theoretical preparation yet, such as coded-character sets,evaluation regarding the theory of diachronic texts, multiple-language processing, collation inmultiple-script environment, fundamentals of type-setting and page-description, and so on. (d) Furthermore, it is planned to refine the methods of multiple script data-input, exchange protocolsof type-setting etc.; and to actively intend to take part in input methods and interface on themultimedia system such as search and access of images, animation, and phonetic abstracts.To be meaningful, the achievement of the Center should be open to the world. Thus the Center isplanning to have a “Digital Museum of Languages and Cultures”. This can be accessed throughinternet. This Digital Museum of Languages and Cultures not only presents a digital library oflinguistic, cultural and historical data but also makes available the theoretical and technical aspects ofbuilding such libraries which could be utilized by others in building similar libraries.INFORMATIONRESOURCESCENTER19
元のページ ../index.html#21