Purpose: This paper seeks to examine the further integration of machine translation technologies with cross language information access in providing web users the capabilities of accessing information beyond language barriers. Machine translation and cross language information access are related technologies, and yet they have their own unique…

Purpose: There are many library automation packages available as open-source software, comprising two modules: staff-client module and online public access catalogue (OPAC). Although the OPAC of these library automation packages provides advanced features of searching and retrieval of bibliographic records, none of them facilitate full-text…

Purpose: Searching for information and viewing visual representations of products in e-organisations is a common activity of the e-visitors to these organisations. For example, in e-museums, users are shown images or other visual information of the existing objects. The aim of this paper is to present a tool which supports the effective searching…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of a personalised information support system to help faculty members to search various portals and e-resources without typing the search terms in different interfaces and to obtain results re-ordered without human intervention. Design/methodology/approach: After a careful survey of…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate various issues related to Chinese language localisation in Evergreen, an open source integrated library system (ILS). Design/methodology/approach: A Simplified Chinese version of Evergreen was implemented and tested and various issues such as encoding, indexing, searching, and sorting…

Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to examine the various features and components of web-based online public access catalogues (OPACs) of IIT libraries in India with the help of a specially designed evaluation checklist. Design/methodology/approach: The various features of the web-based OPACs in six IIT libraries (IIT Delhi, IIT Bombay, IIT…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe the use of ebrary's e-books at Staffordshire University. Design/methodology/approach: Details are provided of the history of Staffordshire's involvement with ebrary as a supplier of e-books as well as methods of searching for information in the ebrary collection as well as other e-book collections…

Purpose: Locating information on the internet is an important skill in the Information Society. Some recent studies showed that searching using non-English terms is a more demanding task than searching in English. Based on these observations, this paper aims to apply the Instructional System Design (ISD) methodology to analyse, design and…

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to share the experiences and challenges faced by the Open University Library (OUL) in using screen capture software to develop online literature search tutorials. Design/methodology/approach: A summary of information literacy support at the OUL is provided as background information to explain the decision to…

Purpose: The paper seeks to describe the provision of access to the Safari Tech Books collection of e-books at Hillingdon Libraries. Design/methodology/approach: Details are given of how the e-books collection is part of a broader range of e-information services provided by Hillingdon. Methods of searching for e-books are described, with…

Purpose: Online content has largely replaced traditional print-based resources as the primary tool for literature searching throughout much of the academic and research community. This paper presents the results of a small-scale study, commissioned by the JISC in 2004, to assess the potential efficiency gains that may be achieved through the use…