The language resource switchboard

Abstract

The CLARIN research infrastructure gives users access to an increasingly rich and diverse set of language-related resources and tools. Whereas there is ample support for searching resources using metadata-based search, or full-text search, or for aggregating resources into virtual collections, there is little support for users to help them process resources in one way or another. In spite of the large number of tools that process texts in many different languages, there is no single point of access where users can find tools to fit their needs and the resources they have. In this squib, we present the Language Resource Switchboard (LRS), which helps users to discover tools that can process their resources. For this, the LRS identifies all applicable tools for a given resource, lists the tasks the tools can achieve, and invokes the selected tool in such a way so that processing can start immediately with little or no prior tool parameterization.