1. Essex Gateway to Arabic Linguistics Resources Project Kakia Chatsiou (achats @ essex.ac.uk) 9 th Language and Computation Day 08 th October 2010

2. Outline About the project Project Objectives Deliverables Completed Deliverables Website Organisation Demonstration Next steps

3. About the project Funded by a departmental research incentive scheme 2009-2010 with project title “Creating Resources in support of research in Arabic” Duration of 6 months 2 principal investigators (Sonja Eisenbeiss & Louisa Sadler) 1 research assistant (myself) with the help of Georgia Chatsiou on web and accessibility issues

4. Project Objectives To create infrastructure to support research and teaching on Arabic (and Semitic) in the dept of Language and Linguistics To facilitate collaboration between staff and students in the dept and open up routes for collaboration with researchers in other sites. To further enhance the visibility of the Dept and the University as a centre for research on Arabic To build links across departments and sectors in the university

5. Deliverables Creation of a website for tools and resources on Arabic linguistics (incl. resources for theoretical, computational, psycholinguistic research) Compilation of a searchable bibliography of works on Arabic (and Semitic) linguistics Investigation into availability and usability of existing corpus resources & associated tools for Arabic Wiki for news and discussions (to aid information sharing) Establishment of a (rudimentary) document repository of dissertations and other materials

6. Completed Deliverables (1) Website with tools and resources on Arabic Bibliography (currently 944 entries and counting) in.bib and.html searchable format Alphabetic list of corpus resources with additional information where available such as language variety, medium (written/spoken), adult/child corpus, encoding, size, compiler, availability and licensing, associated tools/corpora, other notes

7. Completed Deliverables (2) Incorporation of the Arabic Syntax Wiki for information exchange within Essex (information was restructured and design was modified to match departmental theme) Establishment of a list of dissertations on Arabic awarded by the department between 1982-2010 with links to the Albert Sloman Library records and.bib entries. A bibliography of all is also available for download from the same page.

8. Website Organisation Part of the departmental pages (one of the limitations as well); additional internal navigation menu added on the right Pages include: Arabic@Essex, Corpora, Dictionaries, Useful Tools, Bibliography, Dissertations, Conferences, Funding, Research, Jobs, Journals

9. Demonstration http://www.essex.ac.uk/linguistics/research/arabic/

10. Next Steps Internal testing of the current version of the website (within the department & friends); after incorporating any changes, dissemination to mailing lists/partners Maintain and enhance the bibliography Complete Project Documentation Follow up and acquire Arabic PhD dissertations from Alumni

11. Questions?