FEW ARE PROBABLY aware that Hong Kong's Central Library is home to the world's largest Chinese and English multimedia information search system.
Users can plug into the state-of-the art technology of this system, known in short as MMIS, at any of the 500 workstations throughout the library. It stores 1.3 million pages of digitised documents and images and more than 400 hours of audio-visual resources. It also allows users to search for non-digitised material from the same platform.
The MMIS was recently recognised by the Hong Kong Computer Society's IT Excellence Awards 2001 for its flexibility and capacity to upgrade library services.
Senior librarian Chan Cheuk-wah says the system revolutionises conventional information searching at the library. 'In the past, library users had to bury their heads and search rows of catalogues to find the information that they needed. Now, with the MMIS, they do it with just a mouse click in a few seconds and read them on the computer screen,' he says.
About 20 per cent of the 200,000 library visitors use the system a month and the information that they are often searching for relates to images. For a fee, the system also enables users to print out posters, maps and photos. The 'zoom' and 'fit' functions adjust the size of the images to the users' needs.
