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Call For Paper: The Electronic Library Special Issue on Multilinguality in Digital Libraries Deadline: November 1, 2010 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.