Any sketch corpus contains valuable data that will be useful beyond the acquisition sketch itself and that should be archived. The first part of our manual provides you with some information and suggestions on how to approach this topic.
Although many of the procedures are the same, archiving child data is different from archiving adult data.
From a legal point of view, many countries do not allow for this possibility at all. From an ethical point of view, the sketch corpus captures unguarded informal day-to-day interaction within a family, giving us glimpses into the personal life and life choices of individuals. It will almost inevitably feature highly personal moments, as well as little dramas, tantrums and tears, and adults’ reactions to them. Even if parents give their informed consent to making such data publicly available, they will have to make this decision on behalf of their children. As the children grow older and come of age, they may not agree with the decisions made by their parents.
We encourage you to carefully think about access rights, access restrictions and the options available for anonymization or pseudonymization. This should be negotiated early on with your archive, and our manual includes a list of issues to discuss with the archive and the families and communities you work with.
To strengthen the interpretability of the data, we also recommend compiling more extensive metadata than is typical for adult corpora. Our manual summarizes what additional information could be included in such a dossier.