CLARIN does not create linguistic resources; its purpose is to offer rapid access to the existing resources and to facilitate their reuse in new contexts. When resources and tools are produced for individual usage interoperability and therefore the need to adhere to standards or best practices is of little relevance. The problem of interoperability only emerges when linguists are ready to offer their resources and tools to other researchers. One of the requirements of interoperability is to connect different resources to the same tool. This can be made using standards, but this would imply having all the resources standardized (this is an ideal situation, but cannot always be achieved in reality). When needed, a standard can also play the role of a pivot format (resources are converted to the standard before they are used).
