General concept

The creation, management, use and dissemination of digital or digitized lexical data present a host of challenges for researchers, lexicographers and language resource specialists all over Europe: arriving at a common conceptualization of the lexical domain is easier in theory than in practice. The same applies to finding the right tools. Despite the availability of standards and best practices in the field (such as ISO standard 24613 LMF and the TEI guidelines, for instance), the lexical landscape in Europe is still disjointed. Because of the the many and varied permutations and combinations that surface forms can take in any given dictionary, it is still extremely difficult to study, analyze and compare different dictionaries, even after they have been digitized, let alone write an empirically supported history of European lexicography.

The goal of the proposed master-class is to create an intensive learning environment in which advanced students, scholars and experts in the field will work hand in hand on conceptualizing, planning and instructing each other on how to implement concrete projects without losing from view the ambitious goal of interoperability and data exchange.  At the same time, the organizers plan to provide robust documentation of the event so that its educational outputs can be shared with a wider community, and to use the event as an incubator for editing a special journal issue on lexical data in the digital age.