Larger Edition vs. Burn-on-Demand

If you're using CD-R or DVD-R as a distribution medium, there are basically two ways to produce them: the production of a large series of identical copies (traditional edition) or to produce needed copies on demand.

To produce a larger edition has the advantages that

• the production may be out-sourced
• the production price per copy is lower
• hardware incompatibilities are very unlikely

This method is therefore clearly recommended if you do not intend to maintain and update the corpus on a regular basis.

To burn on demand means that always the latest version of the data will be copied on to the medium. The advantages here are

• you do not need to decide beforehand how many copies to invest in
• updates are possible
• you may easily switch to new media types

For example, the speech corpora at BAS are always distributed in their newest version, because BAS is actively working on most of its speech resources. Using this concept it was possible that for instance the RVG1 corpus which initially consisted of 32 CD-Rs will now be distributed on 5 DVD-Rs as well.

On the other hand the SpeechDat corpora produced by BAS and distributed by ELDA were produced in a larger edition because nobody is responsible for maintaining these corpora any more.