Reviving a marginalized traditional script, especially one used by a minority community,
requires a lot of work and a lot of different skills.
Are there still skilled teachers available? If not, can we offer someone whose background is in instructional design to help set up classes? Would it be helpful to publish educational materials? If so, we have people who can help with that.
Does the script have a good working font? If not, we have graphic designers and font designers willing to help.
Has the script been digitized, or accepted by Unicode? If not, we have people who have been through that important but long and arduous process.
For a full list of what we are already doing,
see Projects.
For a full list of areas in which our
members can help, see Skills Matrix.
Skills Matrix
What skills are needed to help revive threatened scripts, or boost newly-created ones? More than you’d think! Writing is so deeply interwoven into society that it takes the opposite of a perfect storm—say, a perfect sunny day—to develop it from all angles and in all its uses.
Here are some of the skillsets that people who have joined the Script Keepers Network have offered, plus others we know will help, and for which we are hoping to hear from those who want to join!
1
Font creation, design, or development
Font creation, design, or development
2
Type design
Font creation, design, or development
3
Making keyboards (layouts and development)
Font creation, design, or development
4
Text-to-speech and speech-to-text technologies (e.g. https://huggingface.co/Ghana-NLP)
Font creation, design, or development
5
AI, Natural Language Processing models
Font creation, design, or development
6
Web or app development
Font creation, design, or development
7
Programming, reviewing code
Font creation, design, or development
8
Developing Unicode proposals
Font creation, design, or development
9
Creating conscripts
Font creation, design, or development
10
Discovering scripts we don’t yet know about
Font creation, design, or development
11
Teaching skills and developing educational materials
Font creation, design, or development
12
Creating illustrations or storyboards
Font creation, design, or development
13
Making software (e.g. to teach scripts)
Font creation, design, or development
14
Adapting a script for digital library cataloguing
Font creation, design, or development
15
Digital preservation of endangered manuscripts
Font creation, design, or development
16
Research or analysis
Font creation, design, or development
17
Collecting/sourcing data
Font creation, design, or development
18
Creating Wikipedia, or other, articles
Font creation, design, or development
19
Administrative tasks (organization, basic technological support, etc.)
Font creation, design, or development
20
Program management
Font creation, design, or development
21
Contacting writers, editors, podcasters, bloggers, to write about the SK Network
Font creation, design, or development
22
Promoting and raising awareness for scripts
Font creation, design, or development
23
Networking with linguists, advocates, technologists, academics, etc.
Font creation, design, or development
24
Circulating opportunities for funding or grants
Font creation, design, or development
It’s fair to say that at the moment we have far more people offering skillsets in the first half of this list than in the second. If you reckon you can help with Numbers 15-24, please contact Alana Brown via alana@endangeredalphabets.com.