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Purpose – Global cooperation between and within organisations has become essential for successful businesses. For the information management within such an international and necessarily multilingual environment, new challenges arise due to the diversity of the stakeholders and participants as well as due to the heterogeneity of approaches and traditions of information handling.

Design/methodology/approach – Key technologies like search technologies need to be adapted to support content in multiple languages and efficient access to it. Information processes need to be analysed while bearing in mind that problems may arise due to cross-cultural misunderstandings. The diversity requires appropriate treatment and appropriate methods in information systems in order to improve international information flows.

Findings – This chapter identifies some of these challenges and shows how they can be approached from an information science perspective. User-oriented research at the University of Hildesheim in the areas information retrieval, information seeking and human–computer interaction is presented.

Originality/value – Global enterprises and organisations may use this chapter to identify challenges and solutions for adapting their information technology to an international scale. Researchers who work on multilingual information access and intercultural aspects of information systems get an overview on some current research.

Building multilingual resources and providing multilingual services have always been important tasks for Chinese academic libraries, but they are also the difficult issues that the libraries are facing. In this chapter, we present a survey conducted on six different academic libraries for collecting data on multilingual resource building, on the usages of the multilingual resources and on multilingual services. Each of our survey to an academic library consisted of four interviews to the library administrator and the librarians of the book, periodical and database departments. Our goal in this chapter is to examine multilingual resources and services in academic libraries in China. The study results confirm several conclusions from the literature about multilingual resources and services in Chinese academic libraries, and at the same time, the results also reveal original insights on possible strategic decision on focusing on multilingual databases and books, and on the problem of lacking adoption of translation-based technologies such as cross-language information access and machine translation in improving the usages of multilingual collections and services.

Prior studies have shown that terminology support can improve health information retrieval but have not taken into account the characteristics of the user performing the search. In this chapter, the impact of translating queries’ terms between lay and medico-scientific terminology, in users with different levels of health literacy and topic familiarity, is evaluated. Findings demonstrate that medico-scientific queries demand more from the users and are mostly aimed at health professionals. In addition, these queries retrieve documents that are less readable and less well understood by users. Despite this, medico-scientific queries are associated with higher precision in the top-10 retrieved documents results and tend slightly to generate knowledge with less incorrect contents, the researchers concluded that search engines should provide query suggestions with medico-scientific terminology, whenever the user is able to digest it, that is, in users above the lowest levels of health literacy and topic familiarity. On the other hand, retrieval systems should provide lay alternative queries in users with inadequate health literacy or in those unfamiliar with a topic. In fact, the quantity of incorrect contents in the knowledge that emerges from a medico-scientific session tends to decrease with topic familiarity and health literacy. In terms of topic familiarity, the opposite happens with Graded Average Precision. Moreover, users most familiar with a topic tend to have higher motivational relevance with medico-scientific queries than with lay queries. This work is the first to consider user context features while studying the impact of a query processing technique in several aspects of the retrieval process, including the medical accuracy of the acquired knowledge.

Preedip Balaji B holds a masters degree in library and information science from Bishop Heber College, Bharathidasan University, Trichy in 2007. He worked as information professional in different positions at Indian School of Business and IKP Knowledge Park, Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh, South India. Having received his Junior Research Fellow award in 2009 from the University Grants Commission, New Delhi, currently, he is pursuing doctoral studies at Documentation Research and Training Centre, Indian Statistical Institute, Bangalore. His research interests are in natural language processing, faceted analysis and classification. He has to his credit 10 national and international publications, published in journals, workshop manual and conference proceedings.

This study investigated the design of three online public library catalogs in light of the cognitive ability and success of children ages five to eight.

A quasi-experimental approach was employed to examine the influence of system design on children’s searching strategies and search success. Interviews were used to explore children’s rationale for using icons and taxonomies in the catalogs. Fifty one children from one public library participated in this study. Inferential statistics were utilized to whether significant differences existed between use of the catalogs and the children’s success in finding information.

Use of images and text were helpful in searching the catalogs. Results of the ANOVA test indicated no significant difference among children’s searching success rates and the three catalogs. Additionally, the participants misidentified representations used in icons in all three catalogs and created valid search paths that did not produce results. There was a disconnect between the children’s cognitive abilities and the design representations of the three catalogs.

The study took place in one location, thus one should not overgeneralize the findings. Use of assigned tasks may have affected children’s success rates. Children’s searching using printed cards of display screens from the three catalogs instead of real-time interaction with them is also a limitation.

Because of the children’s reliance on images, the choice of visual representations is crucial to successful searching. Interface designers should involve young users in the design of today’s online catalogs. They should also consider new forms of representations such as auditory icons, verbal mouse overs, and zooms.

In addition to addressing the need for research on young children’s information seeking and use of online catalogs in public libraries, this research focuses on the need for an additional layer of visual representation and highlights flaws in currently used catalog designs.

Teaching content courses to multicultural, multilingual students presents challenges in both helping students master content outcomes and language expectations (Leaver & Shekhtman, 2009). This chapter outlines an instructional approach that encourages multilingual literacy, intercultural discussions, and target language development through a series of cumulative tasks in which students take on the dual roles of learners and experts.

This chapter describes how the original curriculum, which was developed for intensive English and first-year composition classrooms (Eckstein, Chariton, & McCollum, 2011; McCollum, 2012), has been adapted for use in wider academic contexts. The curriculum combines techniques from English for Specific Purposes course design (Viana, Bocorny, & Sarmento, 2019) with a student-centered, collaborative classroom environment. Course developers identify field-specific oral and written genres and then support students in their development of advanced target language as they analyze case studies.

This cumulative model honors the diverse linguistic backgrounds of students in multilingual classrooms. Learners are encouraged to deepen their content-area knowledge by using online sources to select course material in any language that they feel comfortable consuming, and then they develop their target language skills by participating in group discussions and sharing digital projects with organizational and linguistic support from the instructor. The iterative nature of the approach offers multiple opportunities for students to improve both their content knowledge and language proficiency within a formulaic and familiar instructional model that also enhances their technology skills.

Library and information science (LIS) is a global academic, intellectual and industrial field with a large international reach. From a human perspective, LIS includes library and information professionals, the information industry people, students, academics and researchers. The field has a strong history of teaching, education and research development, standards, networks and distribution worldwide. Growth and development in the field have taken in all parts of the world. In this monograph we focus on the current trends in teaching, education and research in the Asia-Oceania region. This vast region of the world covers Asia, which is from Korea and Japan in the north to India in the west and Indonesia in the south, and Oceania (Australia New Zealand and neighbouring islands such as Fiji, Papua New Guinea, etc). In this book we have tried to cover as much of the Asia-Oceania region as we could within the chapters presented, but not every country or aspect of LIS in the region has been represented.

This chapter introduces the issue of language into the already complex nature of e-HRM system implementation in multinational corporations (MNCs). In the light of scant empirical research on language in international business in general and e-HRM in particular, this chapter reviews the research on language issues in the MNC context. The chapter then illustrates the challenges presented by language by reporting findings from a qualitative study into the effects of language standardization on e-HRM system acceptance and use in the foreign subsidiaries of a Finnish MNC.

This chapter outlines current developments in Indian libraries, information services and cultural sector collectively highlighting recent trends and developments as India increasingly takes centre stage in the area of libraries and information literacy development. The chapter also provides a critical analysis of library and information science education in India and highlights the need for government strategies and policies related to public libraries. Some 17 federal states and union territories in the Republic of India have no public library legislation and therefore low literacy rates. India needs public awareness campaigns, civic engagement and community developments including the grass-roots empowerment of public libraries. Financial reforms, modernization and federal funding strategies for public libraries are also required to energize cultural organizations and national libraries. A recent major development is the establishment of a National Commission on Libraries following recommendations by the National Knowledge Commission. However, Indian public libraries do not cater sufficiently for the growing youth population or other strata's of Indian society. The growing Indian higher education sector also necessitates information policies for open access, digital preservation and repositories development.