Papers & Presentations
Unicode Multilingual Web Page Development
Andrew Cunningham, Maribyrnong Library Services
Unicode is a multilingual and multiscript character set. The use of Unicode makes it possible to create multilingual web pages in community languages. Multilingual public internet access provides the opportunity to create a new paradigm for LOTE Collection Development and LOTE service provision.
The Maribyrnong Library Services web site was initially a trilingual web site with separate HTML documents in English, Vietnamese and Chinese (Traditional). Unicode web pages have now been developed. This has allowed us to create HTML documents that contain English, Vietnamese and Chinese. Recently Amharic text has been added, and additional languages will be included in the future.
This paper will explore the potential use of Unicode in public library web sites, current limitations hindering the use and deployment of Unicode HTML documents, and strategies available in the HTML4 and the Cascading Style Sheets specifications in overcoming some of these limitations.