It aims to provide a comprehensive record of the linguistic practices characteristic of a given speech community.
The materials in question can range from vocabulary lists and grammar rules to children's books and translated works.
Typical steps involve recording, maintaining metadata, transcribing (often using the International Phonetic Alphabet and/or a "practical orthography" made up for that language), annotation and analysis, translation into a language of wider communication, archiving and dissemination.
By practising good documentation in the form of recordings with transcripts and then collections of texts and a dictionary, a linguist works better and can provide materials for use by speakers of the language.
New technologies permit better recordings with better descriptions which can be housed in digital archives such as AILLA, Pangloss, or Paradisec.
Local archives in particular, which may have vital records of the area's indigenous languages, are chronically underfunded and understaffed.