Here is another 200 words or less repository review I wrote for class last week. The word count on this one comes in at 199. I really think blogging and Twittering made this review assignment a little easier to do than it might have been otherwise. There are two more, one is a legal repository and one an aquatic science repository. If you are interested in them I will share, but since they aren’t book or language related I didn’t think anyone would be particularly interested. Anywho, here’s The Rosetta Project:

The Rosetta Project is an ambitious work to archive all documented human languages. A global collaboration of specialists and native speakers, the archive contains close to 100,000 pages of material on over 2,500 languages. Originally conceived by the Long Now Foundation in 2000 as an experiment in microetching technology, a digital archive was created to organize and disseminate the collected information. In 2004 the Project received a $1 million National Science Digital Library grant to increase the size of the original collection and improve archive interoperability, networking and collaboration. The digital archive is hosted and backed up by Stanford University Libraries, but a durable backup has also been created on a microetched disk that requires no computer technology to read. Unfortunately for visitors to the Rosetta Project website, it has chosen to digitally re-create the etched disk. Instead of providing PDFs of the documents on the disk, one must zoom in and out and navigate across the digital disk. There is no search function and overall it is a frustrating experience. To seriously browse the archive one must go to the Rosetta Project Collection at the Internet Archive. There, documents are searchable and available in PDF format for download.