Challenges and Opportunities of Multilingual Library Websites: Evidence from a Developing Country
International Journal of Business and Management Invention ISSN (Online): 2319 – 8028, ISSN (Print): 2319 – 801X www.ijbmi.org Volume 1 Issue 1 ‖‖ December. 2012 ‖‖ PP.01-15 Challenges and Opportunities of Multilingual Library Websites: Evidence from a Developing Country Amir Manzoor (Management Sciences Department, Bahria University, Karachi, Pakistan) ABSTRACT: This study investigates the language barriers on library websites, analyzingdata collected from 133 library websites in Pakistan. Despite a significant increase in the number of library websites in Pakistan, the development of multilingual library websites is still in its infancy stages and doesn’t cater to the needs of diverse population of its users. The study provides first-hand findings on the multilinguality of library websites in Pakistan with a focus on challenges and opportunities arising from such websites. Implications of research along with future research directions are also discussed. Keywords––Language Barriers, Library Websites, Multilingual Websites, Machine Translation. I. INTRODUCTION Language barriers are natural in human communication. In cross border communication, these barriers not only include dominance of a particular language (e.g. English) but also the increasingly multilingual the Internet [(David Crystal 2001); (Becker 2007)]. Since beginning of the last decade, the multilinguality on the Internet has sharply increased with online content available in hundreds of languages [(Crystal 2006); (Kelsey 2011)]. This increased multilinguality has created new challenges for language barriers. In order to facilitate the multilingual users to effectively navigate, search, filter, and retrieve the multilingual content from the library websites, various stakeholders need to do collective efforts [(Dubois 1979);(Yunker 2002); (Tixier 2005); (Becker 2007); (Diekema 2012)].
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