CLARIN Virtual Language Observatory

license

GPL-3.0(OSI)

source

public(github.com/clarin-eric/VLO)

core features withheld

no — run by CLARIN ERIC, a European research infrastructure consortium

The VLO's importer, search configuration and web application are published under GPL-3.0, with instructions for deploying a full instance. CLARIN ERIC, a European research infrastructure consortium governed by its member countries and set up to operate on a non-economic basis, runs it as a public service with no paid tier.

• https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32012D0136 recorded 2026-10-08

  Commission Decision 2012/136/EU, Annex (Statutes): "CLARIN shall have the legal form of a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC)"; "CLARIN ERIC shall construct and operate CLARIN on a non-economic basis"; membership is open to states and intergovernmental organisations, and "Member States shall jointly hold the majority of the voting rights in the General Assembly"; "The General Assembly shall be the body of CLARIN ERIC with full decision-making powers, and shall represent the members of CLARIN ERIC."

• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/clarin-eric/VLO/HEAD/DEPLOYMENT.md recorded 2026-10-08

  "The instructions below describe the installation of the applications necessary for browsing: the VLO web application, the Solr server, and the meta data importer."

• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/clarin-eric/VLO/HEAD/LICENSE recorded 2026-10-08

  GNU General Public License, Version 3, 29 June 2007, full text.

• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/clarin-eric/VLO/HEAD/README.md recorded 2026-10-08

  "Using the VLO faceted browser, metadata can be searched and browsed by facet. It consists of three software components: a Solr server with VLO specific configuration, an importer and a web application front end."

• https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/strategy/strategy-research-and-innovation/our-digital-future/european-research-infrastructures/eric/eric-landscape_en recorded 2026-10-08

  Listed under "Active European Research Infrastructure Consortia (ERICs)": "CLARIN, the pan-European Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure, makes digital language resources available to scholars and researchers of all disciplines".

The VLO publishes no count of searches or visitors, and activity on its code repository says nothing about use of the portal. No reading was recorded.

• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/clarin-eric/VLO/HEAD/CHANGES.txt recorded 2026-10-08

  Release notes through "VLO 4.15.0 (September 2026)"; no usage figure.

The VLO searches metadata that language-resource centers publish and it harvests, and the resources themselves stay with those centers. It holds and serves no data of its own, so like Masader it is a catalog that points to its providers.

• https://aclanthology.org/L12-1227/ recorded 2026-10-08

  Abstract: "a metadata-based portal for language resources"; "We describe the metadata harvesting process, based on OAI-PMH, and the conversion from several formats ... to their CMDI counterpart profiles."

• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/clarin-eric/VLO/HEAD/DEPLOYMENT.md recorded 2026-10-08

  "A `DataRoot` element describes sets of metadata files", which the importer loads into the Solr index.

• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/clarin-eric/VLO/HEAD/README.md recorded 2026-10-08

  "Using the VLO faceted browser, metadata can be searched and browsed by facet. It consists of three software components: a Solr server with VLO specific configuration, an importer and a web application front end."