The design and implementation of documentation projects for spoken languages 1. Introduction The purpose of this chapter is set up a blueprint on how to design and carry out a language documentation project for an endangered spoken language. In reality, no one blueprint will suffice since there are many documenter profiles and a variety conditions for language endangerment. For instance, the documenter may be a leading figure in a community’s culture and literature committee, a linguist hired by a community to initiate a documentation project, a linguist pursuing an academic goal such as completing a dissertation or gathering data to answer research questions, or an academic, most often a linguist or linguistic anthropologist, collaborating with the community to document its language. The language to be documented could score well on a vitality scale or be in danger of going silent in the immediate future. In this chapter, I will assume that the documenters are community members and academic researchers working together with shared goals and methods and I will further assume that the language to be documented has average vitality by UNESCO standards. That is, a majority of the population speaks the language even though most children are multilingual and use the language in limited domains; there is a writing system but not much by way of written literature or grammatical description; and although government educational policies do not support maintenance of the language, the community is interested in creating documentation towards revitalization. 1 With this scenario in mind, I review factors which can impact the planning and implementation of a language documentation project. These factors are: immediate and long- term goals; the composition and effective management of the team undertaking the documentation; funding to support the required activities; technological proficiency and