Making a corpus accessible to specific users with restrictions

[Elnaz Kia]

Dear Laurence,

I have the same inquiry as discussed here. However, I do have a question/concern about copyright issues. 

I am giving a workshop to Dual Language Immersion (DLI) teachers on creating corpus-based materials. The corpus that I would like to share with the teachers at the workshop has access constraints. That is, I cannot share the corpus files with the teachers. My question is whether I can follow the steps you mentioned here (copied below) without compromising the access agreement. How can I share the active corpus with specific users for a short time without letting them download the files? 

"To answer your question, yes you can create a single-file corpus in AntConc 4 and then distribute it to students. Follow the steps below:

1) Create your corpus (in any way you like)

2) Select the corpus

3) In the Active Corpus view, click "Save" and save the corpus to a location on your computer. You can distribute this to your students.

4) Students can load the corpus by opening the corpus manager, selecting the "Pre-built" corpus option and clicking "Open" next to name of the active corpus."

I would appreciate your help!

Many thanks,

Elnaz Kia

[Laurence Anthony]

Hi Elnaz,

This is a quite complicated question and we would probably need a lawyer to answer the question completely. AntConc 4 does not store the raw files. Instead, it stores every token of the corpus files in rows of a database. Then, within AntConc, the Word Tool (for example) reconstructs the original documents by combining all the tokens back together. 

So, if you distribute an AntConc database you are *not* distributing the original files. However, the copyright agreement for the corpus might also prohibit distributing any data that allows the original files to be recovered. Even here, though, AntConc removes all formatting etc from the files before storage. So, one could argue that the *original* files cannot be recovered from an AntConc database and you are safe.

As I say, a lawyer would be in the best position to answer the question, but perhaps if you simply contact the corpus owner and explain what you want to do, they might give you permission, especially if you explain that only a database of the tokens of the original files are stored.

I hope that helps.

Laurence.

###############################################################
Laurence ANTHONY, Ph.D.
Professor of Applied Linguistics
Faculty of Science and Engineering
Waseda University
3-4-1 Okubo, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 169-8555, Japan
WWW: http://www.laurenceanthony.net/
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[Elnaz Kia]

Hi Laurence,

Thank you so much for the fast response and explanations. That does make sense to me. As for your question about the corpus owner, I am in charge of developing this corpus but the data comes from a testing company and they are the concerned party. Based on our agreement with the testing company, I can give the workshop attendees access to the corpus (after signing an NDA), granted they won't be able to copy the corpus files on their computers. We do not have a corpus analysis tool on our website yet so giving online access to the users won't let them run corpus analyses and won't be useful. That's why I would like to use AntConc as a platform to allow users to analyze the corpus without giving them the corpus files. 

I still do not understand the following:

1. How can I give access to 20 individuals for a limited time? I want to give the workshop attendees 2 weeks to create a pedagogical activity using the corpus. 

2. Can I delete the shared corpus from AntConc? and if that's possible, would that remove the users' access to the corpus?

Sorry if I didn't get this from your response. 

Thanks again,

Elnaz

[Laurence Anthony]

Dear Elnaz,

1. How can I give access to 20 individuals for a limited time? I want to give the workshop attendees 2 weeks to create a pedagogical activity using the corpus. 

This is not possible at the moment. I would suggest you simply ask the participants to sign an agreement to destroy the corpus after 2 weeks.

2. Can I delete the shared corpus from AntConc? and if that's possible, would that remove the users' access to the corpus?

There is no such concept of a 'shared' corpus in AntConc. You can send your participants the corpus and ask them to load it into AntConc, but it would not be shared in the normal sense of the word.

Laurence.

###############################################################
Laurence ANTHONY, Ph.D.
Professor of Applied Linguistics
Faculty of Science and Engineering
Waseda University
3-4-1 Okubo, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 169-8555, Japan

E-mail: antho...@gmail.com
WWW: http://www.laurenceanthony.net/
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[Elnaz Kia]

Dear Laurence,

Thank you so much for your response. 

Best Wishes,

Elnaz

Elnaz Kia, Ph.D. (she, her, hers)

Post-Doctoral Research Associate

Second Language Teaching and Research Center (L2TReC)

University of Utah

 

 

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[dl]

I follow these discussions with interest even though I am not right now an active user of AntConc 4.x.
I am a retired engineer/developer (U.K.) exploring using AntConc (inter alia) to analyse project corpora where different users have different permissions (similar to your requirement, it seems).

Reading your requirement could you create a private group of 20 users in Zotero?

https://campusguides.lib.utah.edu/zotero

https://campusguides.lib.utah.edu/zotero/collaboration

The Zotera url's would be links to corpora and sub-corpora to integrate into AntConc using an automation script.
In Windows explore Listary and in Linux (Ubuntu in my case) explore Albert. In Mac it would be Alfred but I do not have a Mac.

Longer term I can see AntConc possibly interfacing to Zotero (and other like apps) via Python extensions. 

See Zotero plugins.  https://www.zotero.org/support/plugins

That is, in a collaborative toolchain. A method I often advocate.

I also contemplate (in theory) hooking up AntConc to Wolfram text analysis engine.

https://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/868998

And another idea germinating away is to integrate xAPI statements to get feedback from groups. Perhaps in a project eLearning team.

See also here for sharing corpora via cloud .. https://www.sketchengine.eu/

End of random ideas for now.

David Law
U.K.

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[Laurence Anthony]

Hi David,

Thank you for all these great ideas. In the corpus manager, the user could be presented with options to connect to different repositories, some requiring IDs/PWs and others openly available. Then, depending on the corpus, it could be downloaded and kept on the users own computer or accessed remotely leaving it secure.

Let's see if the initial online repository works smoothly and confirm that people can easily access it using the new interface. I think it's quite intuitive, but let's see.

Laurence.

###############################################################
Laurence ANTHONY, Ph.D.
Professor of Applied Linguistics
Faculty of Science and Engineering
Waseda University
3-4-1 Okubo, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 169-8555, Japan
E-mail: antho...@gmail.com
WWW: http://www.laurenceanthony.net/
###############################################################

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[Elnaz Kia]

Hi David,

Thank you so much for taking the time to share your amazing ideas! I will explore them to see what works best for me.

Best wishes,

Elnaz

Elnaz Kia, Ph.D. (she, her, hers)

Post-Doctoral Research Associate

Second Language Teaching and Research Center (L2TReC)

University of Utah

 

 

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