Challenges and Opportunities for Information Management in Multi-literacy Environments

Challenges and Opportunities for Information Management in

Multi-literacy Environments Presented by

Gayathri J. Gunawardena

Information

• Information is communicating or receiving knowledge on some fact or circumstance (Wikipedia, 2013).

– Information conveys a message

29/11/2013 NILIS Symposium 2013 2

Information Life Cycle

Creation and gathering

Processing

Transmittal

Retrieval and use

Retention

Disposition


Information Management (IM)

• Organization and control of various activities associated in the information life cycle (Wikipedia, 2013)

– Organizing, retrieving, acquiring, securing and maintaining information

Pre 1970s

• Paper based Post 1970s

• Digitized


Importance of IM

• People need to

– Share knowledge and resources in the world to solve problems and

– Make life more comfortable


Multi-literacy environment

• Literacy means the capture and expression of information

• Multi-literacy means many ways of achieving this goal

– Multilingual / Multicultural

– Multimedia

– Multimodal

Multilingual / Multicultural content presented using multimedia and accessible through multimodal delivery techniques


Multilingual / Multicultural

• There are 6000+ languages in the world

• It is not possible to learn all of them

• Language barriers are natural in human communication

• Lack of a single language for communication


Multimedia

• Text

• Audio

• Video

• Graphics and animation

• Interactivity content

• Still images


Multimodal

• Various human device interaction modes such as vision, audition and taction


Reality

• Access to and use of information is a universal human right

• This cannot be achieved in reality – Why?

• Not all content is digitized Information not accessible via web or mobile

• Language barrier There are so many languages in the world and it is not possible to learn them all during one’s lifetime

• Illiteracy 980 m of the global population are illiterate • Digital divide Only 39% of world population access the

internet • People with disabilities They have special requirements


Global Challenge for IM

• Bridging the gap on information requirements of all human beings is a global challenge


http://www.google.lk/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=tN0ouMBz3kGDVM&tbnid=1tWHumWaEwcm8M:&ved=0CAUQjRw&url=http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240174471/Top-10-information-management-stories-of-2012&ei=RXiXUozgKOiBiQeBhYGQCA&bvm=bv.57155469,d.aGc&psig=AFQjCNEmwl4BMlSDi7pgRurFgjoOTyECjQ&ust=1385744782129753

http://www.google.lk/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=mDE9sNyfSvEy7M&tbnid=YuxgCo4B8qd_QM:&ved=&url=http://www.dashboardinsight.com/articles/business-performance-management/enterprise-information-management-eim-part-2-a-vendors-perspective.aspx&ei=DXiXUqbGLeuViQfRnICwCA&bvm=bv.57155469,d.aGc&psig=AFQjCNEmwl4BMlSDi7pgRurFgjoOTyECjQ&ust=1385744782129753

Solution

• The technology is regarded as the enabling tool to satisfy the information needs of all human beings


http://www.google.lk/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=vuFpgtUU9rP1xM&tbnid=27GVkOal2K1xKM:&ved=0CAUQjRw&url=http://developmentdiaries.com/information-technologies-play-central-role-in-advancing-social-good-ban-tells-youth-forum/&ei=inmXUrGECeWjiAej5YDYDQ&bvm=bv.57155469,d.aGc&psig=AFQjCNFFFNDUMbbzoOAyc6QHdXX7korzEg&ust=1385745051577267

Technology

• Rise of Information Communication Technologies

– Invention of the computer

– Advent of the internet Information doubles every two years

– Proliferation of mobile and portable devices

– Wireless communication

– User-friendly interfaces in devices Transformation from command line interfaces to user friendly and easy to use graphical user interfaces


Opportunities

• Universal access to all human knowledge anytime, anywhere using any device

– Extract traditional wisdom and learnings from modern sciences

– Facilitate innovation and civilization progress through the extraction of traditional wisdom and learnings from modern sciences


Opportunities contd…

• Next generation of push technology for multilingual, multimodal and multimedia delivery of content via the web and mobile technology



• Advancement of research and development of multi-lingual and multi-modal technologies for digitization of content and creation of digital libraries.

– The China-US Million Book Digital Library initiative(Huang et al., 2005)



• Valuable way of communication and information exchange for the illiterate – visual, voice and touch sensitive screens


http://www.google.lk/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=J8ct3OfsZB-I6M&tbnid=c8oVm6xJA_PI6M:&ved=0CAUQjRw&url=http://www.dermatologyupdate.com.au/features/-not-so--smartphone-apps&ei=MHqXUvuRGoS6iQei7oGICA&bvm=bv.57155469,d.aGc&psig=AFQjCNELkbdwXl6OJ5767sfmsH8wBMtC4w&ust=1385745285997654


• People with special needs such as travellers especially tourists, children, elders, deaf-mutes and blind persons require multimodal personalized user interfaces



• Standards like UNICODE and W3C further enhances the effective use of web for handling multilingual content across borders



• The availability of affordable and cost effective open source software such as Greenstone and Dspace promotes the building multilingual digital libraries, websites, information systems and databases (Biswas et al.,2010)


http://www.google.lk/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=GuGR8i9SgMElgM&tbnid=E8JTVr6kFqDpkM:&ved=0CAUQjRw&url=http://www.jivesna.com/Dspace/main.html&ei=S3-XUtkFra6JB6j6gMAI&bvm=bv.57155469,d.aGc&psig=AFQjCNGeFHatwEdY3PfAr_07rdi4DjXq_g&ust=1385746625168896

Challenges

• Resource intensiveness

– Sufficient funds

– Material and

– Human capital resources


Challenges contd…

• Converting traditional content to digital – Certain operating systems that limit the correct display of special

characters in certain languages when represented in UNICODE

– Words pronounced phonetically are stored in a different context

– Software tools for transliteration from a specific language to UNICODE are difficult to find or are not available

– Example: Handling multi-linguistic issues pertaining to introducing e-Governance solutions in India (Lata et al., 2006)


Challenges contd…

• Visual icons used in multimodal delivery are misunderstood by some cultures, or worse has been offensive in some cultures

– Five sided stars replaced by seven sided or eight sided stars when implementing an International Children’s Digital Library (Hutchinson et al., 2005)


Challenges contd…

• In multilingual digital libraries there have been instances of the content being socially or politically or religiously objectionable

– For example, in the International Children’s Digital Library the fact that there were more Arabic books than Hebrew books resulted in political concerns related to Arab-Israeli conflict (Hutchinson et al., 2005)


Challenges contd…

• Cross language support requires translations.

• Such translations introduce three types of errors namely lack of translations for technical terms, acronyms, and proper names (Diekema, 2012)


Challenges contd…

• Explicit form of human knowledge cannot be exactly replicated in the digital format but implicitly expressed in different media such as text, image, audio and video

– Eg: Indigenous medicines Vedic scripts


Challenges contd…

• Lack of efficient and effective organization and retrieval tools

– Give rise to information overload rather than aiding the growth of knowledge diffusion and quality enhancement


Challenges contd…

• Complexities associated with use of technology

– Some may not have the comprehension and skills to use the technology?

– There can be others who cannot afford to buy the technology?


Conclusion

• Multilingualism increases the efficiency of information exchange across borders.

• This is facilitated by using multimodal delivery methods such as vision, audition, and taction with the use of multimedia technology

• Technology is an enabler for information management in such multi-literacy environments

• Undoubtedly, there is enormous growth potential for the promotion of information management in this area


References

1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information accessed in November 2013 2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_management accessed in November 2013 3) http://1howmany.com/how-many-languages-in-the-world accessed in November 2013 4) http://www.emc.com/leadership/programs/digital-universe.htm accessed in November 2013 5) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_literacy_rate accessed in November 2013 6) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_digital_divide accessed in November 2013 7) HUANG Tie-jun, TIAN Yong-hong , WANG Chun-li, SHI Xiao-dong , GAO Wen (2005)Towards a

multilingual, multimedia and multimodal digital library platform, Journal of Zhejiang University SCIENCE ISSN 1009-3095

8) Biswas Goutam, Paul Dibyendu(2010) An evaluative study on the open source digital library softwares for institutional repository: Special reference to Dspace and greenstone digital library, International Journal of Library and Information Science Vol. 2(1) pp. 001-010, February, 2010

9) Lata Swaran, Chandra Somnath (2006) Challenges of Multilingualism and Possible Approach for Standardization of e-Governance Solutions in India, Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, New Delhi 110 003, India

10) Hutchinson Hilary Browne, Rose Anne, Bederson Benjamin B., Weeks Ann Carlson, Druin Allison (2005)The International Children’s Digital Library: A Case Study in Designing for a Multilingual, Multicultural, Multigenerational Audience, Information Technology And Libraries, March 2005, pp 4-12

11) Diekema Anne (2012) Multilinguality in the Digital Library: A Review, Instructional Technology & Learning Sciences, Department of at DigitalCommons@USU


Thank you


Challenges and Opportunities for Information Management in Multi-literacy Environments

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