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1 – 10 of over 2000
Article
Publication date: 11 August 2022

Anping Wu and Jiangping Chen

This study aims to understand the technical and operational challenges encountered by multilingual digital libraries and their strategies to solve problems in sustaining…

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to understand the technical and operational challenges encountered by multilingual digital libraries and their strategies to solve problems in sustaining multilinguality services for digital libraries.

Design/methodology/approach

Using the multiple-case method, this study investigated two digital libraries that have sustained multilinguality for over a decade: the World Digital Library and the Digital Library of the Caribbean.

Findings

This study identified eight factors that contributed to the success of the two multilingual digital libraries and eight technical and operational challenges they have faced. A framework for digital libraries to sustain multilinguality is proposed. This framework illustrates the challenges and strategies to address the challenges in 11 aspects: creation, leadership, collaboration, content, metadata, translation, funding, technology, preservation, staffing and copyright.

Research limitations/implications

This study focused on two multilingual digital libraries administered in the USA, though they do not fully represent multilingual digital libraries in the USA. Therefore, the findings from the study may not apply to multilingual digital libraries the USA or other countries. As on-site interviews of both digital libraries were conducted at the beginning of 2019, the timeframe of this study is up to that date.

Practical implications

With more users worldwide seeking information online, more digital libraries will be providing multilingual services. This study provides guidelines to digital library developers and archivists for building and sustaining their digital libraries or archives. The experience and lessons learned from these two digital libraries may also help to better understand challenges and use effective strategies in building and sustaining multilinguality.

Social implications

The users and communities of digital libraries will be able to learn the benefits and challenges as related to building and sustaining digital library services. These services always need support to better serve their users and communities.

Originality/value

As the first multiple-case research that investigates in-depth challenges and approaches of digital libraries in sustaining multilinguality, this study presents a general picture of how the two digital libraries have succeeded in sustaining multilinguality. Theoretically, the study enriches the literature by providing a more comprehensive sustainability framework for multilinguality. This framework specifies possible aspects to consider for gaining sustainability of multilingual digital libraries and offers useful guidelines and insights for the digital library community to build multilingual services.

Details

The Electronic Library , vol. 40 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0264-0473

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 April 2022

Dan Wu, Shu Fan, Shengyi Yao and Shuang Xu

Ethnic minorities (EMs), who make up a sizable proportion of multilingual users, are more likely to browse and search in their native language. It is helpful to identify…

Abstract

Purpose

Ethnic minorities (EMs), who make up a sizable proportion of multilingual users, are more likely to browse and search in their native language. It is helpful to identify multilingual users' information needs to provide public digital cultural services (PDCS) for making their life better.

Design/methodology/approach

The in-context interview is an efficient way to explore EMs' information needs and evoke their daily experience with PDCS. The material from 31 one-on-one interviews with EMs in China was recorded and analyzed using thematic analysis.

Findings

The findings reveal that language proficiency is a critical factor influencing multilingual information access (MLIA) and multilingual users' information needs. Moreover, language ability, digital literacy and cultural literacy are important components of multilingual information literacy (MLIL), which is helpful for EMs to access PDCS. In light of Kochen's theory, the information needs of PDCS can be classified into the aroused need of resources, the recognized need of functions and services and expressed need. For the expressed need, it is necessary to develop a one-stop convergence platform of PDCS to process various requests of resources, functions and services in the future.

Originality/value

The findings will be valuable for governments, public institutions and social organizations in identifying, addressing and resolving these issues about PDCS.

Details

Journal of Documentation, vol. 79 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0022-0418

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 2 February 2015

Krystyna K. Matusiak, Ling Meng, Ewa Barczyk and Chia-Jung Shih

The purpose of this paper is to explore multilingual access in digital libraries and to present a case study of creating bilingual metadata records for the Tse-Tsung Chow…

1331

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore multilingual access in digital libraries and to present a case study of creating bilingual metadata records for the Tse-Tsung Chow Collection of Chinese Scrolls and Fan Paintings. The project, undertaken at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries, provides access to digital copies of calligraphic and painted Chinese scrolls and fans from the collection donated by Prof Tse-Tsung Chow (Cezong Zhou).

Design/methodology/approach

This paper examines the current approaches to multilingual indexing and retrieval in digital collections and presents a model of creating bilingual parallel records that combines translation with controlled vocabulary mapping.

Findings

Creating multilingual metadata records for cultural heritage materials is in an early phase of development. Bilingual metadata created through human translation and controlled vocabulary mapping represents one of the approaches to multilingual access in digital libraries. Multilingual indexing of collections of international origin addresses the linguistic needs of the target audience, connects the digitized objects to their respective cultures and contributes to richer descriptive records. The approach that relies on human translation and research can be undertaken in small-scale digitization projects of rare cultural heritage materials. Language and subject expertise are required to create bilingual metadata records.

Research limitations/implications

This paper presents the results of a case study. The approach to multilingual access that involves research, and it relies on human translation that can only be undertaken in small-scale projects.

Practical implications

This case study of creating parallel records with a combination of translation and vocabulary mapping can be useful for designing similar bilingual digital collections.

Social implications

This paper also discusses the obligations of holding institutions in undertaking digital conversion of the cultural heritage materials that originated in other countries, especially in regard to providing metadata records that reflect the language of the originating community.

Originality/value

The research and practice in multilingual indexing of cultural heritage materials are very limited. There are no standardized models of how to approach building multilingual digital collections. This case study presents a model of providing bilingual access and enhancing the intellectual control of cultural heritage collections.

Details

The Electronic Library, vol. 33 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0264-0473

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 6 April 2012

Dan Wu, Daqing He and Bo Luo

This study aims to survey academic users in order to identify their needs and expectations about multilingual information processing when they interact with digital libraries. The…

2137

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to survey academic users in order to identify their needs and expectations about multilingual information processing when they interact with digital libraries. The study specifically aims to determine the disparities in needs and expectations when users speak different languages.

Design/methodology/approach

A survey was designed to fill in the gaps in the knowledge about academic users' multilingual needs and expectations for digital libraries. The survey questionnaire incorporates questions about different aspects of the participants' multilingual needs and expectations covering multilingual needs, the multilingual behavior, often‐used multilingual information resources, and desired functions for the multilingual services, retrieval and interfaces in digital libraries. The results are obtained through statistical analyses and clustering methods.

Findings

Overall, participants exhibited many multilingual needs during their academic activities. They often require multilingual information when they access academic databases or web information. Frequently, participants use online translation resources and tools, but they are not satisfied with the translation quality. Participants want many multilingual capabilities in digital libraries; they also want more sophisticated multilingual search interfaces. However, participants from different countries or who speak different languages show significant differences in their multilingual needs and expectations of digital libraries. This study's three user groups demonstrated clear differences in all aspects of multilinguality examined, as did the three latent groups identified through the clustering methods.

Originality/value

Few studies have examined the multilingual information process in digital libraries from the point of view of academic users. This study draws its inputs directly from real academic users from different countries and provides insights into multilinguality in digital libraries.

Details

The Electronic Library, vol. 30 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0264-0473

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 26 April 2022

Timothy Veach, Yeongjoon Yoon and John D. Iglesias

Organizations have been challenged to identify antecedents to improved employee adjustment to the work environment changes that arose in the wake of the COVID-19 global pandemic…

Abstract

Purpose

Organizations have been challenged to identify antecedents to improved employee adjustment to the work environment changes that arose in the wake of the COVID-19 global pandemic. This study aims to explore the effect of multilingualism on employee ability to adjust to workplace changes based on the concept that multilinguals have been found to switch between tasks more efficiently as compared to monolinguals.

Design/methodology/approach

Applying a sequential explanatory mixed methods research approach, quantitative performance evaluation data on 207 credit union employees is analyzed using hierarchical linear modeling to predict employee performance, and thematic analysis of qualitative data representing the adjustment narratives of six monolingual and six multilingual employees within the sample is conducted, corresponding to the period during which employees were adjusting to broad workplace changes after the onset of the global pandemic.

Findings

The results suggest greater predicted improvement in the performance of multilingual employees. Reliance on the task-switching ability associated with multilingualism is found to be the primary self-evaluative factor for successful change adjustment among multilingual employees.

Practical implications

In light of work performance benefits identified in this study, organizations may consider multilingualism as a characteristic preceding better adjustment to organizational change, and not simply as a skill applicable to tasks requiring language proficiency, suggesting practical implications for human resource and organizational management.

Originality/value

This is the first sequential explanatory study focusing on the task-switching ability of multilinguals as an antecedent to change adjustment evidenced by improved work performance within an organizational context.

Article
Publication date: 6 April 2012

Tina Budzise‐Weaver, Jiangping Chen and Mikhaela Mitchell

This study aims to understand key features of existing multilingual digital libraries and to suggest strategies for building and/or sustaining multilingual information access for…

3647

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to understand key features of existing multilingual digital libraries and to suggest strategies for building and/or sustaining multilingual information access for digital libraries.

Design/methodology/approach

A case study approach was applied to examine four American multilingual digital libraries: Project Gutenberg, Meeting of Frontiers, The International Children's Digital Library, and the Latin American Open Archives Portal. This examination used a framework derived from digital library evaluation practice. The missions, goals, funding, partners, users, collections, services, and technologies of these digital libraries were analyzed to present their key multilingual features. The collaboration and crowdsourcing characteristics were highlighted and discussed.

Findings

These four multilingual libraries benefit substantially, both in the creation of the library and in its access, from the collaboration of groups domestic and international with different language expertise. For building the multilingual collection and services, some libraries involved both staff and users. For multilingual access to the collection, however, none of the libraries used machine translation or cross‐language information retrieval technologies.

Research limitations/implications

The four cases are all publicly available digital libraries in the USA. Their features may not be applicable to digital libraries in other countries or to commercial digital information services.

Practical implications

With the advancement of machine translation technologies and the wide application of social media, multilingual digital libraries may have even better opportunities to sustain their multilingual capabilities through crowdsourcing and the application of new technologies.

Originality/value

This study summarizes the key features of four existing multilingual digital libraries. It provides insights into important factors for building successful multilingual digital libraries. The suggested strategies may help digital library developers to design appropriate multilingual information access services.

Article
Publication date: 6 April 2012

Anne R. Diekema

Together, increasing globalization and the internet created fertile grounds for the establishment of multilingual digital libraries. Providing cross‐lingual access to materials is…

2632

Abstract

Purpose

Together, increasing globalization and the internet created fertile grounds for the establishment of multilingual digital libraries. Providing cross‐lingual access to materials is of particular interest to political entities such as the European Union, which currently has 23 official languages, but also to multinational companies and countries that have different languages represented among their citizens. The main objective of this paper is to review the literature on multilingual digital libraries and provide an overview of this area.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on a thorough literature search in four different databases, a core set of literature on multilingual digital libraries was retrieved. Literature on various aspects of this topic was reviewed. The paper is organized based on emerging themes directly drawn from the literature. Where warranted additional literature is brought in to provide necessary background information or clarification.

Findings

Creating a multilingual digital library is a highly complex undertaking and typically requires a collaborative effort between different organizations and people with different areas of expertise. Enabling users to search across languages requires translation resources to cross the language barrier, which can be challenging depending on the language and resource availability. Additional challenges were found to be in data management (localization and language processing), representation (dealing with different fonts and character codes), development (creating international software, cross‐cultural collaboration), and interoperability (system architecture and data sharing). Research in multilingual digital libraries was mostly system based involving experimental systems or system prototypes.

Research limitations/implications

Most likely the literature review does not include all possible journal articles on multilingual digital libraries even though the literature searches done to obtain these articles were thorough and deliberate. Journal articles without the descriptors used in this search and those articles not indexed in the four different databases used in the search will not be included here. The review excludes cross‐language information retrieval research unless it is directly related to existing multilingual digital libraries, or a connection to digital libraries in general is made in the paper itself.

Originality/value

This paper provides the first literature review on the topic of multilingual digital libraries and provides a concise overview of relevant aspects in this area. The number of multilingual digital libraries is growing, as is the interest from the research community in these libraries to apply their research findings from cross‐language information retrieval. This review article provides a valuable entry point to the field of multilingual digital libraries for researchers, practitioners, and other interested parties.

Details

The Electronic Library, vol. 30 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0264-0473

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 28 November 2017

Janina Brutt-Griffler

The shift in the function of English as a medium of instruction together with its use in knowledge construction and dissemination among scholars continue to fuel the global demand…

21602

Abstract

Purpose

The shift in the function of English as a medium of instruction together with its use in knowledge construction and dissemination among scholars continue to fuel the global demand for high-level proficiency in the language. These components of the global knowledge economy mean that the ability of nations to produce multilinguals with advanced English proficiency alongside their mastery of other languages has become a key to global competitiveness. That need is helping to drive one of the greatest language learning experiments the world has ever known. It carries significant implications for new research agendas and teacher preparation in applied linguistics.

Design/methodology/approach

Evidence-based decision-making, whether it pertains to language policy decisions, instructional practices, teacher professional development or curricula/program building, needs to be based on a rigorous and systematically pursued program of research and assessment.

Findings

This paper seeks to advance these objectives by identifying new research foci that underscore a student-centered approach.

Originality/value

It introduces a new theoretical construct – multilingual proficiency – to underscore the knowledge that the learner develops in the process of language learning that makes for the surest route to the desired high levels of language proficiency. The paper highlights the advantages of a student-centered approach that focuses on multilingual proficiency for teachers and explores the concomitant conclusions for teacher development.

Details

PSU Research Review, vol. 1 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2399-1747

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 6 April 2012

Wen Zeng

The paper aims to explore multilingual thesauri automation construction based on the freely available digital library resources. The key methods and study results are presented in…

Abstract

Purpose

The paper aims to explore multilingual thesauri automation construction based on the freely available digital library resources. The key methods and study results are presented in the paper. It also proposes a way that terms are automatically extracted from multilingual parallel corpus.

Design/methodology/approach

The study adopted the technology of natural language processing to analyze the linguistics characteristics of terms, and combined this with statistical analyses to extract the terms from technological documents. The methods consist of automatically extracting and filtering terms, judging and building relationship among terms, building the multilingual parallel corpus, and extracting term pairs between Chinese and foreign languages through calculating their associated probability. The experiments run on the Java test platform.

Findings

The study obtains the following conclusions: finding the similarities and differences between the Chinese thesaurus standard and international thesaurus standard. The methods for automatically extracting terms and building relationships among them are presented. Eventually the multilingual terms' translation sets are generated based on real corpora. The results of the study show that the proposed methods can obtain better performance. The effect of automatic terms' translation alignment method is better than that of traditional IBM model method.

Practical implications

The study results can provide references for further study and application of multilingual thesauri automation construction using Chinese as a pivot.

Originality/value

The paper proposes new ideas on thesaurus automation construction in the digital age. The presented method based on linguistics and statistics is a new attempt. According to the experimental results, this exploration and study is innovative and valuable. In addition, these ideas and methods give a good start for improving information services of the PRC's National Science and Technology Digital Library.

Details

The Electronic Library, vol. 30 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0264-0473

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 5 June 2017

Li Si, Qiuyu Pan and Xiaozhe Zhuang

This paper aims to understand user information behaviours when they perform multilingual information retrieval. It also offers reference for the development of multilingual…

1620

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to understand user information behaviours when they perform multilingual information retrieval. It also offers reference for the development of multilingual information retrieval systems and relevant service platforms.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors designed an experiment on multilingual information retrieval with WorldWideScience, utilized Camtasia studio7 (a screen capturing and recording tool) to record overall operational processes of subjects and collected participants’ thought processes with think-aloud protocols. Meanwhile, a questionnaire survey and interviews were used to examine the subjects’ background information, their feelings for the experiment and their ideas about the experimental platform, respectively. Thirty-two valid data points were obtained by 41 subjects.

Findings

The users preferred their own language for retrieval. Most users from social science chose general search or advanced search freely according to the tasks. The majority of the participants selected key words directly from the tasks as search terms. Doctoral candidates were more likely to construct a search query with logic symbols. Translation tools were utilized for assisting retrieval and solving doubts of translation. When facing obstacles, users stayed on the original web page to explore continually, followed by back to homepage.

Originality/value

This paper provides a study of user behaviour through investigating how users behave on the whole process of retrieving multilingual information. The findings offer advice for optimizing the function of multilingual information retrieval systems and service platforms.

Details

The Electronic Library, vol. 35 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0264-0473

Keywords

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