About this project
The Ainu Textual Sources Database collects historical documents, old manuscripts, dictionaries, wordlists, place-name materials, oral-literature records and field notes on the Ainu language, and links their bibliographic data, holdings, digital images, transcriptions, decipherment research, geographic and chronological information. It is not merely a list of materials but an open knowledge base spanning philology, linguistics, history and information science.
Purpose
To make it possible to see at a glance where Ainu-language sources are, what they contain, how they have been read, what research surrounds them, and which region, period, dialect and context they relate to.
Scope
Historical documents and early records of Ainu, vocabularies and dictionaries, place-name materials, oral-literature transcriptions, survey notes, manuscripts and printed editions, as well as secondary literature (transcription, decipherment, philological and linguistic studies) and digital resources (IIIF, library collections, museum databases, transcription projects).
Data model
The central entity is the Source (資料). Around it are People, Places, Institutions, external links, tags, source-to-source relations and a full revision history for collaborative editing.
Data sources
The initial dataset is aggregated from the open ainu-dictionaries, ainu-grammar and ainu-corpora repositories. Bibliographic records can then be corrected and enriched collaboratively, with sourced statements and edit history.
Contributing
Sign in to add new sources or correct existing records. Every edit is versioned, so the history of each record is preserved.