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Human languages are an essential property of culture and in recent years many of the spoken languages are in danger of extinction. UNESCO estimates that at least a half of the world's 6500 spoken languages will dissappear within the next 100 years. This problem can be addressed to some extent by computer systems that collect, archive and disseminate dictionaries for various languages, thus performing the key function of preservation.

The specific approach taken in this project was to first develop a Web-based multilingual thesaurus, with mechanisms for the submission and retrieval of language data and metadata. This thesaurus was created as a wrapper around the Fedora Web-based digital repository toolkit. Two distinct user interfaces were then developed as part of a proof of concept system, namely a Web interface and a cellphone interface. These were created using AJAX and J2ME+GPRS respectively.

Both user interfaces were designed using an iterative User-Centered Design approach, and the back-end system was designed to conform to the needs of the user interfaces.

The resulting system proved to be useful as users indicated that they could use it to preserve spoken languages by submitting and retrieving words in their own languages. The independent successful evaluations of the 2 user interfaces together demonstrate the feasibility of creating a preservation-directed archive as a layered Web-based digital repository, where the preservation function is separable and accessible through a well-defined Web API.