Fascinating and important theme. Fascinating
problem.
I was particularly stuck in this praiseworthy cfp
by the following incidental ( and true ?? ) assertion :
"Nearly every sector of our increasingly global
economy and culturally diverse society needs to
master multilingual communication."
And just got wondering about how this stacks up
against the current state of foreign language learning
and competency -- or of prevailing attitudes,
perceptions, policies, and *efforts* in the matter.
The authors did, after all, choose to use the verb
"needs".
I'm especially curious what LIS education might be
*concretely* doing about this. It should very well be
a lot, one would think -- if these colleagues of ours
are correct.
Or -- and this did occur to me as a real possibility --
is the idea here that we can somehow ( through
technology, 'intelligent' agent systems, or whatever )
"master multilingual communication" -- and thereby
better serve our economy and society -- without, at
the practical individual and collective levels,
significantly improving non-native-language facility ?
Ideas on this ? Thanks.
- Laval Hunsucker
Breukelen, Nederland
----- Original Message ----
From: He Daqing <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Fri, September 10, 2010 6:17:52 AM
Subject: [call for paper] The Electronic Library Special Issue on
Multilinguality in Digital Libraries
Call For Paper:
The Electronic Library Special Issue on Multilinguality in Digital Libraries
OVERVIEW
==========================================================================
This is a fascinating period in the history of library services. For
the first time, it is possible to build large, diverse, and universal
access library services using collections of digital information and
delivering over an information infrastructure at the global scale.
This so called digital library brings together researchers and experts
from many different disciplines and backgrounds, and enables changes
with profound social, organizational and legal implications. Over the
past decades, digital libraries have been adopted widely in many
areas, and are becoming increasingly complex. They draw on
heterogeneous resources, serve diverse user populations, and carry out
tasks that are getting more and more complicated. Increasingly, there
are demands for multimedia, multicultural, and multilingual digital
libraries.
Multilingual communication enables the dissemination of information
beyond the boundaries of languages. Nearly every sector of our
increasingly global economy and culturally diverse society needs to
master multilingual communication. On the one hand, digital
information has been created in more than one language, and on the
other hand, world wide open access has created a large user population
with very diverse languages and cultural backgrounds. Studying
multilingual technologies and resources, therefore, helps digital
library users to search, browse, recognize and use information from
sets of multilingual multimedia information objects.
The study of multilingual technology has existed for at least 15
years, and many new technologies, such as multilingual information
access systems, machine translation systems, multilingual thesaurus,
etc., have been developed. However, technology development has not
fully solved the technology-related problems, not to mention the
communication and society-related issues. For example, no widely-used
multilingual information access system is available in most digital
libraries. People still mostly search for information within their own
language unless searching for academic information. In addition, the
laws to govern information in different languages are still far from
complete, especially the online copyright law. Languages and societies
still feel threatened by certain online efforts, such as the Google
Book Search project. We still do not have an effective ontology or
metadata scheme, which are very important resources in digital
libraries, for online resources in one language, not to mention those
in multiple languages.
THE SCOPE
==========================================================================
We invite submissions exploring various multilingual related issues in
all types of digital libraries. This special issue aims to put
specific emphasis on examining the recent achievements at the service
side, the user side, and the collection development side of
multilingual resources and technologies in digital libraries. The
topics that we are specifically interested in are:
1. Service side:
• The current status of multilingual services in digital libraries
• The legal and copyright issues in multilingual information access
• Multilingual information services, training and education
2. User side:
• Digital library users' multilingual demands and requests
• Human information behavior in multilingual digital libraries
• Human computer interaction in multilingual digital libraries
3. Collection development side
• Multilingual resources and technologies for open access
• Multilingual collection building and evaluation
• Multilingual Web academic information organization and mining
• Multilingual generic and domain specific information portal development
4. Support technology
• Cross language information retrieval and machine translation for
digital libraries
• Multilingual thesaurus, metadata and ontology for digital libraries
• Multilingual social network analysis and mining for digital libraries
• Multilingual information visualization for digital libraries
• Other multilingual information processing technologies for digital
libraries
However, the solicited papers are not restricted to the topics
discussed above. All papers related to multilingual resources and
technologies in digital libraries will be considered.
HOW TO SUBMIT
==========================================================================
Potential authors are asked to submit to the guest editors by email a
tentative title and short abstract (which can be revised for the
actual submission) to assist in the formation of a panel of
appropriate reviewers. Each actual submission of manuscript should
note that it is intended for the Special Issue on Electronic
Libraries. Submissions to the special issue should follow the
journal's formatting guidelines (see
http://info.emeraldinsight.com/products/journals/author_guidelines.htm?id=el),
but the manuscript submissions should be sent to the guest editors by
email directly.
REVIEW PROCESS
==========================================================================
Submissions will undergo the normal review process, and will be
reviewed by three established researchers selected from a review panel
formed for the special issue. Barring unforeseen problems, authors can
expect to be notified regarding the review results within three months
of submission.
GUEST EDITORS
==========================================================================
Prof. Daqing He,
School of Information Sciences,
University of Pittsburgh
Email: [log in to unmask]
Dr. Dan Wu,
School of Information Management,
Wuhan University
Email: [log in to unmask]
IMPORTANT DATES
==========================================================================
Deadline for submission of title and abstract: November 1st, 2010
Deadline for paper submissions: December 1st, 2010
Notification to authors: March 1st, 2011
THE ELECTRONIC LIBRARY
==========================================================================
The Electronic Library is a refereed journal which is devoted to the
applications and implications of new information and communication
technologies, automation, user interfaces, networks and the Web in all
types of libraries, information centers and museums throughout the
world. It provides a vehicle for reporting and reviewing the latest
research, ongoing developments and hardware and software
implementations in today's digital library and information
environments in different countries; as well as trends in usability,
electronic books and e-readiness. It offers practical advice, useful
information and descriptions of specific applications from around the
globe.
--
Daqing He, Ph.D.
School of Information Sciences
University of Pittsburgh
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