Searching CD-ROM databases for non-English-speaking users

Describes how access to English-language information by non-English-speaking students and faculty at a Middle Eastern university is being facilitated by making available a variety of machine-readable sources, particularly CD-ROM, and how not only searching of these sources but also use of the information retrieved and made possible by several means including the provision by faculty and library staff of translations into English of information requests made in Arabic; the publication of bilingual dictionaries covering a wide range of scientific, technological and other disciplines; and the recent development, by other institutions, of a number of online, multilingual databases covering computer terms and a wide range of science and technology fields, accessible via Gulfnet and the Internet. Anticipates the development of an all-sources database accessible through all public search-and-retrieval terminals.