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Elmir YAKUBOV
Director, Khasavyurt Central Municipal Library System
(Khasavyurt, Russian Federation)
Developing Digital Content in the Languages of Dagestan:
A Means of Overcoming the Increasing
Marginalization of Local Languages
While specifying the most pressing challenges of enlarging access to the
world’s documentary heritage, the Lena Resolution adopted in 2008 at the
International Conference on Linguistic and Cultural Diversity in Cyberspace
has offered ways of efficiently tackling these challenges by means of developing
multilingualism in digital environment.
For the last three years after the dissemination of this essential document
strenuous efforts have been made in the Republic of Dagestan by government
agencies and civil society organizations to increase the volume of digital content
in local languages in response to the growing marginalization of languages
of numerous Dagestan ethnic groups. Given that marginality implies a shift
towards monoculture, activities aimed at overcoming this negative trend in
our specific linguistically diverse region should have a special focus on the
preservation of languages and cultural openness of the peoples of Dagestan.
Today the use of regional languages is drastically reduced to family and
household communications in very limited areas, mainly rural, while cultural
requirements and linguistic interests of Dagestan’s peoples go far beyond
ethnic borders. Emerging digital resources of various kinds has become the
means of defining sociocultural profile of modern Dagestanis and their glorious
forefathers.
Full-text collections of fiction and local literature account for a sizable
proportion of the Dagestan segment of the Internet. At this stage they cannot
be considered full-fledged digital libraries, as the documents displayed are
of medium quality, lack metadata, navigation and search tools. However the
demand for such publications in traditional libraries makes us positive about
their popularity in digital environment. This is proved by constant additions to
these collections and an increase in the number of resources providing relevant
content. Affecting sensory perception, digital products of that kind provide
for a better and deeper understanding of one’s affiliation not only to a certain
ethnos, but to the whole mankind.
The Lena resolution highlights inter alia the necessity of further support for
the creation of multilingual dictionaries and thesauruses. Dagestan can boast
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