VALA2002 Session 15 Cunningham

VALA2002
vala peer reviewed

The Open Road: language technology developments and public library services

VALA 2002 CONCURRENT SESSION 15: e-nabling Technologies
Friday 8 February 2002, 14:00 – 14:30
Persistent URL: http://www.vala.org.au/vala2002-proceedings/VALA2002-session-15-cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Multilingual Technical Project Officer, Accessibility and Evaluation Unit, VICNET, State Library of Victoria

Larry Stillman

Accessibility and Evaluation Unit VICNET, State Library of Victoria, and Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Community Networking Research, Monash University

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Abstract

Language technology and access to the internet are crucial components in the development of flexible and responsive library services to culturally and linguistically diverse populations. Minority and emerging languages need public access. Internet access is one way of breaking the linguistic barriers that have been erected around minority and emerging languages. This paper reviews the Open Road multilingual website (www.openroad.vic.gov.au) from a technical perspective, outlining current strengths and limitations of major operating systems and browsers in the display of different character sets. Some solutions for entry and display of languages are offered for public access systems in public library environments.

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VALA2004 Session 7 Cunningham

Persistent URL: http://www.vala.org.au/vala2004-proceedings/vala2004-session-7-cunningham

Global and local dimensions of emerging community languages support

VALA 2004 CONCURRENT SESSION 7: Software Issues
Wednesday 4 February 2004, 14:35 – 15:05

Andrew Cunningham

e-Diversity and Content Infrastructure Solutions, Public Libraries Unit, Vicnet, State Library of Victoria
http://www.vicenet.net.au

VALA2004
VALA Peer Reviewed Paper

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Abstract

The changing immigration patterns and increasing number of migrants from Africa provide public libraries with new challenges for providing equitable library services to their communities. Current trends in the development and provision of electronic multicultural library services indicates the need for public libraries to engage with their local culturally and linguistically diverse communities and cooperatively develop solutions to resourcing and service delivery problems. The development of solutions for African communities involves the exchange of information, resources and knowledge between libraries and other service providers. The paper suggests that future electronic multicultural library services projects need to develop multilingual content infrastructure solutions to assist in ethnic community web publishing.