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Info Bank for ImmigrantsKari Lämsä - Helsinki City Library

The Calimera ProjectBriefing meeting in Brussels on 16-17 January 2004.

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Info Bank for Immigrants –

Multicultural Alliance in Internet • Co-operation project with the International Cultural Centre

Caisa and the Helsinki City Library

• Funded by the European Social Fund and the City of Helsinki

• Server and maintenance from the City Library

• Technical realisation by Blue Meteorite Ltd

• Content from authorities and organisations carrying out immigration and multicultural work

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MCL – MultiCultural Library

• Since 1996, originally Nordic joint venture

• Financial aid from the Ministry of Education until 1999

• Today edited by the Cable Book Library

• Organised information for immigrants

4How to find, decode and act?

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The Info Bank for Immigrants

• Immigrants as editors

• In co-operation with authorities

• Information can be found even if you would not know what to search

• The same information via many different routes

• Chronologically arranged topics

• Technique and the contents were created simultaneously

• Exact guidelines for translation work

6Based on questions in customer service

7Now in eleven different languages, 14 in future

8Information analysed, re-organized and edited

9Difficult words explained by means of word descriptions.

10Shortcuts to documents of authorities

11Implemented at .NET framework

12Classification, key words and Dublin Core

13Editor as MS World or Open Office

14With help of Statistics, e.g., the use of different languagescan be followed.

15All the information content is in Unicode form

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Content in XML form can be published in various services and locations and in many different formats

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Distributed update, persons who update have personaldesktops

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Current Situation

• Project finished, work will continue

• Aim to expand to national service

• Negotiations with authorities and ministries

• Guiding group consists of representatives from different ministries and authorities

• Aim to form a permanently funded editorial board

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• Editorial staff redirects questions to the right institutions• Questions and answers are stored in a database• Frequently asked questions will automatically be found in the

database• The service will evolve into a database of knowledge

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Contact Information:

Infobank: http://www.caisa.hel.fi/• Edmon Dolaian / International Culture Center Caisa

edmon.dolaian@hel.fi

• Kari Lämsä / Helsinki City Librarykari.lamsa@hel.fi

Technology: http://www.meteoriitti.com• Aki Antman / Blue Meteorite Ltd

aki.antman@meteoriitti.com