American Library Association, Human Resources Development and Recruitment, Library Support Staff Resource Center. Resources for Library Support Staff. American Library Association. http://www.ala.org/ala/hrdr/librarysupportstaff/library_support_staff_resource_center.cfm (accessed February 2, 2008).

The American Library Association being the oldest also caters to the grassroots level of the profession for library and information science. This website is the information venue for and about library paraprofessionals as well as professionals.
___

American Library Association, Human Resources Development and Recruitment. Role definition: World Book ALA goal award project on library support staff. Paper presented at the 3rd Congress on Professional Education: Focus on Library Support Staff. Glen Ellyn, Illinois: May 16-17, 2003.
http://www.ala.org/ala/hrdrbucket/3rdcongressonpro/roledefinition.cfm
(accessed February 2, 2008)

This paper was presented in a library congress which focused about the support staff-the paraprofessional. The paraprofessional’s roles and responsibilities in the library hierarchy is discussed. Problem as to doing the same tasks with that of the librarians but receiving lower pay was a source of frustration among the paraprofessionals is the concern of the paper.
___

Bureau of Labor Statistics, United States. Department of Labor Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2008-09 Edition, Library Assistants, Clerical on the
Internet. http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos147.html (accessed February 2, 2008)

The Occupational Outlook Handbook is a career guidance resource that provides information on United States occupations. Each occupation is presented in its own chapter that discusses the type of work that is performed, the work environment, the education and training requirements, the possibilities for advancement, and the typical earnings. The website and the contents are fairly reliable to quote since it is maintained by an official and recognized department of the United States of America.
___

Margeton, Stephen G. Paraprofessionals: surpassing the grade. AALL Spectrum.
Washington, D.C.: American Association of Law Libraries, April 1999.
http://www.aallnet.org/products/pub_sp9904/pub_sp9904.pdf (accessed February 2, 2008)

This short article describes the plight of the paraprofessionals in the library, specifically in the United States. The author, a professor of law and the director of a law library puts it that paraprofessionals are the backbone of the technical department and keep the circulation systems humming. They play an important role in managing library workflow and putting materials into the hands of library users. The author encourages the paraprofessionals to attend and be a member of paraprofessional organization-AALL to gain practical workplace tips.
___

Oberg, Larry R. Library Support Staff in an Age of Change: utilization, role
definition, and status. ERIC Digest (May 1995). [Online] http://www.ala.org/ala/hrdr/librarysupportstaff/library_support_staff_in_an_age_of_change.cfm (accessed February 3, 2008).

This research paper by Larry R. Oberg addresses the changing status of the library personnel. He writes of task overlap and role confusion, new roles for support staff, the emergence of the paraprofessional and their role. Oberg’s primary focus is of the problems facing today’s library staff however he offers a few ideas for remedying these problems.
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II. Information literacy

Adeyinka Tella and S.M. Mutula. “Gender differences in computer literacy
among undergraduate students at the University of Botswana:
implications for library use.” Malaysian Journal of Library & Information
Science 13,1 (July 2008): 59-76. [Electronic Journal of University of
Malaya] http://ejum.fsktm.um.edu.my/ArticleInformation.aspx?ArticleID=635
(accessed February 27, 2009).

The paper was a quantitative research and presents that gender differences exist between female and male undergraduate students. It revealed that students with higher computer literacy were more inclined to access and make use of library facilities. The need for the students to be adequately equipped with computer literacy for their effective use of the library facilities on campus was recommended.
___

Andretta, Susie (2005). Information literacy: a practitioner’s guide. Oxford, UK; Rollinford, NH : Chandos Pub. Google Book Search,
doi:10.1017/S472669605880880

It presents information literacy as the foundation of independent and lifelong learning and stresses the role of the education practitioner as a facilitator. The author gives two important messages for the information professional: 1) develop their roles and engage with teaching and learning, and 2) the need for continuing professional development to boost and maintain their levels of information literacy. The author is an authority in this subject matter since her papers and researches are geared towards information literacy, she a senior lecturer in London Metropolitan University. This book is not available on line but a book review can be found from Google book search.
___

Andretta, Susie, Alison Pope and Geoff Walton. “Information literacy education
in the UK: reflections on perspectives and practical approaches of
curriculum integration.” Communications in Information Literacy 2, 1 (2008), http://www.comminfolit.org/index.php/cil/article/view/Spring2008AR3/68 (accessed February 24, 2009).

This paper presents the current position of information literacy education (ILE) in UK-based academic institutions, and proposes a strategy that ensures the integration of ILE in learning and teaching practices. It points to a number of concerns that might be relevant to other information literacy educators operating in other countries. The writers are librarians and are contributors to scholarly articles on IL especially in UK situation.
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Edzan, N. N. and Mohd Sharif Mohd Saad. NILA: a national information literacy
agenda for Malaysia. Malaysian Journal of Library & Information Science
10,1:91-103, [EJUM database]. http://ejum.fsktm.um.edu.my/ArticleInformation.aspx?ArticleID=317
(accessed February 24, 2009).

This paper looked at the information literacy initiatives in Malaysia and proposes a framework for the implementation of a National Information Literacy Agenda (NILA). The authors are librarians based in Malaysia and are contributors to scholarly articles in the field of librarianship. Subscription to the journal is free.
___

Journal of Information Literacy (JIL) http://ojs.lboro.ac.uk:80/ojs/index.php/JIL/index (accessed February 24, 2009).

Journal of Information Literacy’s aim is to investigate and to make generalized observations on how information literacy impacts on organizations, systems and the individual. This is only published in electronic format. JIL is an international, peer-reviewed, academic journal that aims to investigate information literacy (IL) within a wide range of settings, Papers include here are any topic related to the practical, technological or philosophical issues of IL. The site is maintained by the CILIP CSG IL Group.

___
Boon-Webber blog, The, http://information-literacy.blogspot.com/

The blog is about information literacy which brings news and reports about information literacy around the world, also includes projects, conferences, and links to other IL sites. Philippine IL seminar was mentioned. It is current and updated with at least five entries a week by its two contributors who are authorities in the field of information literacy in the Department of Information Studies at the University of Sheffield and the whole of UK.
___

Butler, John T. and Jerilyn R. Veldof. “Information literacy toolkit: meeting the
challenge of a large research university.” Academic Exchange Quarterly, (Winter 2002), Also available in print form. http://www.thefreelibrary.com/ and http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3325/is_4_6/ai_n28969874/pg_2?tag=content;col1 (accessed June 9, 2008).

The University of Minnesota’s Information Literacy Toolkit is designed to serve the needs of students, faculty and the librarians. It consists of an integrated suite that supports a wide range of learning activities and information research needs. Each of the suites is accessed through online. The study concludes by suggesting that there are real opportunities for academic librarians to help bridge the gap between the Web and the student in attaining information literacy by connecting students with libraries’ high quality resources.
___

McDonald, Joseph. “Information literacy or literate information?” Paper presented at Symposium for Academic Librarians, Eastern Michigan University, April 2004. http://www.mlaforum.org/volumeIII/issue2/conf3.html
(accessed January 29, 2009).

This paper is based on the results of a 15-year longitudinal study of highly effective teachers conducted by Ken Bain., which argue that library based information literacy duplicates in poor fashion what effective teachers, with well-developed curricula, already accomplish with their students. McDonald states otherwise that, library-based information literacy is argued as a corollary to resource-based education. It is frequently presented as the way to help the student deal with the quantity and quality of all these resources which are, required for successful learning and preparation for life.
___

Mohd Sharif Mohd Saad and Awang Ngah Zainab. “Information literacy programmes in Malaysian public universities: an observation.” Paper presented at the 68th IFLA council and general conference, August 18-24, 2002, Glasgow, Scotland. http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla68/papers/142-098e.pdf (accessed February 5, 2009).

The paper discusses the effort initiated by selected Malaysian public university libraries to promote information literacy skills among their users especially in terms of the objectives, course content and approaches used in delivering information literacy programmes and activities. This paper is a good source of information since the writers are in authority and are credible to write about IL in Malaysia.
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Studies in Media & Information Literacy Education (SIMILE).
http://www.utpjournals.com/simile.html (accessed February 24, 2009).

SIMILE provides a venue for scholarly articles that bridge the subject areas of media and information literacy. It also aims to explore the ways in which social and cultural environments impact media production and the methods that could be used to teach the skills needed to “read” these environments. This site is a peer-reviewed journal that uses double-blind refereeing process. SIMILE is abstracted and indexed by several major publications like Ebsco, Google scholar, Scopus and Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory among others. This site makes a good source of article for media and IL education.
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III. Knowledge Management

Bhojaraju G. “Knowledge management: why do we need it for corporate.” Malaysian Journal of Library & Information Science 10,2 (December 2005): 37-50, [Electronic Journal of University of Malaya] http://ejum.fsktm.um.edu.my/ArticleInformation.aspx?ArticleID=329
(accessed February 27, 2009).

The article gives a brief introduction about Knowledge Management (KM), the need, definition, components, KM assets, challenges and processes of KM initiative at any organization. It provided a narration on how the KM initiative has been adopted at ICICI OneSource in India, to support the achievement of its Business Process Outsourcing objectives. This is a good article to know KM from the perspective of a corporate scenario in India.
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Jain, Priti. “ An empirical study of knowledge management: in academic libraries in East
and Southern Africa.” Library Review, 56, 5 (2005): 377-392,
http://www.emeraldinsight.com (accessed August 31, 2008)

This research paper is to distinguish between information management (IM) and knowledge management (KM) and it presented the findings of small-scale research conducted to investigate KM practices in academic libraries in East and Southern Africa. This papers discusses the benefits of KM and offers several recommendations to facilitate KM practices in university libraries in East and Southern Africa.
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Koina, Cathie (2002). Librarians are the ultimate knowledge managers? The Australian
Library Journal. http://www.alia.org.au/publishing/alj/52.3/full.text/koina.html
(accessed October 10, 2008).

Koina proposes that the librarians are the ultimate knowledge managers. She lists what Knowledge Management is not and presents skills needed by an effective knowledge manager, of which these are the skills the librarians already have thus qualifying them to be better knowledge managers. Koina concludes that librarians need to promote themselves and their skills more to the management of the organization/university. Librarians have a lot to offer in the changing world and this has to be seen by other people. The author is in the information industry since 1994 and has been writing and presenting her papers at library conferences.
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Sarrafzadeh, Maryam, Martin Bill and Afsaneh Hazeri. “LIS professionals and knowledge
management: some recent perspectives. “ Library Management. 27, 9 (2006):
621-635. http://www.emeraldinsight.com/0143-5124.htm (accessed August 31,
2008).

This is a research paper to identify the general perspectives of library and information science professionals on knowledge management and examine their assessments of its potential values, benefits, opportunities and threat to the profession.
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Smith, Aaron Richard Nicholas. Textual analytics and personal knowledge management
for policy analysis. [Unpublished thesis, M.A. Simon Fraser University] DOI:
http://ir.lib.sfu.ca/handle/1892/10284,
http://ir.lib.sfu.ca/bitstream/1892/10284/1/etd2784.pdf (accessed February 27,
2009).

This is an unpublished master’s thesis. It identifies and applies criteria for evaluating the suitability of knowledge management tools for policy analysis. The thesis proposes and evaluates a multidimensional schema for automating analysis of large collections of multidisciplinary texts. The schema’s consensus-reality basis is described, its philosophical premises are articulated, and its relevance to the fields of computing science, linguistics, and policy sciences is explained.

     This is a collection of few conferences, seminars, articles and journals of issues gathered through natural language and random selection using the Internet, free access online databases and the UM databases.           

 I.  Definition of Terms

Multilingualism 1.      speaking several languages- able to speak more than two languages 2.      involving several languages – relating to the use of more than two languages.

Internet is a network that links computer networks all over the world by satellite and telephone, connecting users with service networks such as e-mail and the World Wide Web. 

Machine Translation (MT) Technology- computer translation: the translation of text from one language to another by computer.

II.  Introduction and Historical Overview

          The arrival of Internet predicts two distinct directions. The Internet has originated in the United States and currently most international correspondence takes place in English. This is partly for the reason that the Internet has developed as a communication tool for the researchers of science and technology whose common language is English. English is the dominant language used to look up at foreign Web sites or send e-mail across national or sate borders. The 21st century will usher English as the sole common language for international communication leads to the decline of other languages, the English monopoly.

         The second direction where various cultures in different countries thrive and interchange with each other, resulting in fruitful and plural global culture. The globalization of the Internet, if a multilingual environment is realized, is expected to attain the plural culture. Diverse texts in various languages are expected to freely move around on the Internet.

In the last few years there has been technological progress towards the second direction. (Nishigaki)

 III.  Issues/Challenges

      A.    The India Experience

Multilingualism is the norm in India. It is not uncommon to speak one or two languages at home, another on the streets and yet another at school or in business transactions. With a population of over one billion, more than four hundred living languages and ten major scripts, India is a veritable fortress of multilingualism. Multilingualism, especially in written form involving the use of multiple scripts is in rapid decline in India. Children graduating from urban Indian schools are virtually illiterate in the original script associated with their mother tongue. This state of affairs is a result of several factors, including low literacy, inequitable distribution of wealth, the urban-rural divide and globalization without due “recognition of language diversity on an equitable basis” (Gautam Sengupta, 2006)

Urban-rural divide- Economic development is mostly in high-tech areas and confined to urban India. The literate in urban India with its English-medium higher education have enough knowledge of English to be able to access and use English language content on the Internet. They have no urgent need to be able to access internet content in an Indian language and are often illiterate in the script associated with their mother tongue. Rural India is preoccupied with acquiring the basic means of subsistence and can scarcely afford the luxury of web-surfing. The population that stands to benefit most from multilingual content on the web is hardly able to access the web at all.

Technical issue – The advent of Unicode has undoubtedly provided a major impetus to the growth of multilingualism on the internet. But there are major problems with the way Unicode is being applied to encode the Brahmi-derived scripts of India. Examples are The Devanagari Letters Short A and Candra A,  Bangla Khanda-Ta and Malayalam Chillaksarams the use of  ZWJ in South-Asian Scripts, (click on this link to read more on )Technical Issue

        B.     English-monolingual to a multilingual environment

            The end of this century is becoming a major turning point in the character of the Internet, as it changes from an English-monolingual to a multilingual environment. It is obvious that this new direction is preferable, because proficiency in English can be expected only from a relatively small part of the world’s population. 

         C.     Technological issues   

1.    International character code system. The conventional character code systems are different from state to state. For example, Japan, China and Korea have independent code system called JIS, GB and KS respectively, and within these systems the same Chinese (Han) characters have different codes. Obviously, this causes great problems in international communication. The UCS of ISO/IEC-10646-1 determines universal code for 38,885 characters in 25 scripts, namely Arabic, Greek, Han, Hebrew Latin, Tamil, Thai, etc. There are 20,902 Chinese characters included in the UCS. However, critical comments are often heard in Japan and China because the total number of Chinese characters is said to be much more than 50,000. (Nishigaki)

2.  Input/output system. We need technology to input various characters using keyboards or touch panels, and conversely, to display them on screens or papers. In general the technological levels of input/output systems in northern Asia are fairly satisfactory, including Hangul handling systems in Korea. Southern Asia shows much more variance. The complexity in their script often hinders the rapid development of text processing technology.  The language situation of India-with as many as 18 official languages- is too complex to realize a satisfactory multilingual environment on the Internet. It will be difficult to achieve a simple and easy-to-use multilingual environment on the Internet in southern Asia, where many nations and languages are intermingled. (Nishigaki)

3.   Translation-support technology. This is the technology to realize people’s quick understanding and composition of foreign texts by the use of computers. Probably it is considered to be the hardest part of the technologies for multilingual environment on the Internet. The ability to handle diverse characters would be of little use if one cannot understand foreign texts at all. For example the inflow of Arabic texts into Japan could hardly promote international communication unless at least a certain amount of Japanese people can easily grasp the meaning. Therefore one may rightly expect that the technology to translate a foreign text automatically by computer would be of great help.

The so-called machine translation remains a dream technology with few practical applications. During the 1980s a lot of research work was done in the field of artificial intelligence with the aim of realizing machine translation, but without much success. This is mainly because computers find it hard to grasp the ever-changing contexts in which human languages are used. Nevertheless, computers can rightly assist the understanding and/or composition of foreign texts by human being. By memorizing vocabularies and grammatical knowledge in computers, and by retrieving them interactively on demand, even a beginner of foreign language study may quickly grasp the general idea of texts and/or carry on simple compositions. What is important in the Internet age is not perfect translation of each sentence but improvement of communication ability interconnecting different languages. Interactive translation-support technology is considered to become indispensable for this purpose. 

IV.     Technology

A. Universal multiple-octet Coded Character Set (UCS), authorized as ISO/IEC-10646-1 in 1993, offers a large number of characters for various languages. The current UCS is based on Unicode which is 16-bit character code system. There are a lot of standard software like Web browsers (Internet Explorer, Netscape) and mailers (Outlook Express, etc.) have the support for UCS. Therefore users, once they have downloaded the necessary character fonts, are able to exchange message texts in diverse languages across state borders. (Nishigaki)

B. MT Technology. MT technology promotes multilingualism on the Internet.

Two Kinds of Translations:

1.         Traditional Translation- translates a large quantity of foreign texts. A typical example of this is the translation of novels and academic documents, where subtle nuance and/pr strict logic must not be ignored. The translation results are usually preserved for a long time.

2.        Real-time interpretation of spoken language- A typical example is simultaneous interpretation in an international conference. The gist must be transmitted accurately in quite a short time, although the translations are usually not preserved. Real-time interpretation must translate in a few seconds.

 Two properties in MT products for Internet communication:

1.      Interactivity – The MT products must allow users to freely edit and/or modify their translation output.

2.      Evolution – Users must make their MT products evolve and develop in such a way that it becomes more and more useful for them through their own utilization efforts.

V.    Effect of Multilingualism on the Net (Twomey, 2007)

            Multilingualism in the context of the Internet relates primarily to two areas: multilingual online content and access to such content by the use of domain names that include non-ASCII characters (called internationalized domain names, or IDNs) in the Internet’s unique identifier system. A multilingual Internet will enhance the local Internet experience in large regions  of the world by enabling to share and access information or use services offered in their own languages.

Information available in different languages can enrich awareness about myriad cultures, foster appreciation of diversity, and perhaps, inspire greater respect and curiosity and decrease fear or animosity towards an unknown.

VI.    Initiatives

The UNESCO Babel Initiative This initiative aims to … paying particular attention to emerging communication technologies such as the Internet and digital products, in order to preserve and improve cultural and linguistic diversity.

 International Telecommunication Union The ITU mission: bringing the benefits of ICT to all the world’s inhabitants

 The Government of India To encourage its more than 1 billion citizens to generate Internet content in many of its 22 official languages. It is providing CD’s free of charge that contain instructions for generating content.

 Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers Core value: Preserve and enhancing the operational stability, reliability, security, and global  interoperability of the Internet while respecting the creativity, innovation, and flow of information made possible by the Internet.

 Language/Power, Institute of Social Sciences, University of Tokyo Interdisciplinary academic forum that discusses on how people with different nationalities and languages can constitute an online community.

VII. Language Translation Software

1        Translation Office 3000

2        Computer Aided translation

3        BdTranslator

4        All Translator Software

5        Babylon by Google, free online translation

6       Yahoo translation, free online translation

7       Translation Pad

8        Others…

VIII.      Conclusion

            Recent development of information technology is bringing about a situation where a variety of languages circulate in cyberspace, thus opening the way for a fruitful world culture of intense linguistic exchange. A computer-supported translation technology is now expected to contribute significantly to the multilingual communication on the Internet.

Everybody on earth ought to be able to participate in the Internet society in the 21st century. To achieve this goal, it is important to enable everybody to send messages in his/her own mother tongue. A multilingual environment on the  Internet can be expected to have preferable effect on foreign language education, which will result in the promotion of deep cultural interchange. New electronic media like the Internet are now interconnecting those different languages with each other, in the hope of creating something which may be called a New Global Culture.

The goal of multilingualism on the Internet is perfect global communication where everybody on earth can utilize the Internet on equal footing. It aims at interconnecting various peoples with each other, while preserving the plurality of culture and langue.

21st century, The New Great Age of Translation.  (Nishigaki, 1997)

  c  c  c  c  c  c  c  c 

Please see under Webliography the list of references.  

This webliography list the sites I have used in my

“multiligualism on the internet” report.

Nishigaki, Toru. September 1999. “Multilingualism on the Net.”

        http://www.unesco.org/webworld/infoethics_2/eng/papers/paper_5.htm

        (accessed Jan 11, 2009).

Nishigaki,  Toru. “What Can MT do for Multilingualism on the Net.”

        Paper presented at the Machine Translation Summit VIII,

        September 1999. www.mt-archive.info/MTS-1999-Nishigaki.pdf 

        (accessed January 10, 2009).

Sengupta, Gautam. “Multilingualism on the Internet: an Indian 

        perspective. ” Paper presented at the Joint UNESCO and

        ITU Global symposium on promoting the Multilingual Internet,

       Geneva, Switzerland, 9-11 May 2006.

        http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/worksem/multilingual/

       presentations/S9-Rabbani.pdf  (accessed Jan 10, 2009).

Twomey, Paul.  “Effect of multilingualism on the Internet:

       international issues that affect how governments and

       economics address issues to a global infrastructure. 

       Panel discussion at the NSF/OECD workshop on social

       and economic factors shaping the future of the Internet, 

       Arlington, Virginia, January 2007.

       http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/12/18/38014552.pdf

       (accessed January 11, 2009).

UNESCO. The UNESCO B@bel Initiative: promotion and use of

        multilingualism and universal access to cyberspace.

        http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.phpURL_ID=19749&

        URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

        (accessed January 10, 2009).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIBpD7wadho

What I say?

The Internet is a powerful medium of communication. From sending a hate mail to sending a fabricated story. Definitely, the Internet itself can be used to wage war. With the advancement of technology it does wonders especially in terms of waging war. Coming together of intelligent and smart people to plan and get on in a project would be easy. But of course this would entail some meticulous organization and money.

The terms “information superhighway does stand on its name, it does and create chaos if someone really is determined to create war. Through the Internet one can manipulate and control machines. We have seen movies about artificial intelligence and from the way people can program machines and control them it is very possible that through the use of the internet it does and can be used to wage war.