Multi-lingual sources: progress and problems

Louise Edwards

Even getting here was linguistically challenging!

The European Library and CERL are partners in the

CENDARI project

What is The European Library?

Project from 1996 Service launch in 2005 All national libraries of Council of Europe Extending to research libraries Digital and non-digital

• 200 million bibliographic records • 19 million digitised objects• 4% national library collections are digitised

Over 400 languages!

Issues for multi-lingual libraries and YOU, the user

Interface Search and browse Refining the search Content Where we go from

here

Interface

Multi-lingual interface in 36 languages

Browsing

Browsing and visualising language holdings

Collection descriptions – an unexploited asset

Browsing collection descriptions in 36 languages

Searching and filtering

Searching by a name in all its forms…

Checking it’s the right person…

Bringing together different forms of place name…

Subject searching

Linking subjects in English, French and German

But not everything is mapped…

Full text

Full text indexing mostly on newspapers

Future developments Need to scale

• Machine matching of terms• Opening the data• Linking it via the web• User analysis – how to

users interact with multilingual materials?

• Social tagging in different languages

• Collaborative translation• Sharing translations back

Whilst still preserving quality

Thank you

Louise Edwardslouise.edwards@kb.nl