Multilingual Access to Information in A Networked Environment Character Encoding & Unicode Standard

Abstract

With the recent rapid dissemination over the international computer networks of world-wide distributed document bases, the question of multilingual access and multilingual information retrieval is becoming increasingly relevant. Briefly discusses some of the issues that must be addressed in order to implement a multilingual interface for a digital library system in general, and the problems associated with character encoding of multilingual text in particular. Highlights the development of Unicode Standard, which is envisioned as a solution to the problem of multilingual character encoding and its progressive implementation by the computer industry, including the library community. Concludes that library and information networks in India must adopt Unicode to digitize and provide access to the rich repertoire of literature generated in scores of Indian languages.