Electronic version of the encyclopaedia of occupational health and safety as a source of definitions.
OBJECTIVE
Continuous progress in the occupational safety and health field, as well as social-economic development, generates a need for access to definitions. Definitions are usually scattered in many sources and not easy to find. Electronic documents give new opportunity to information access.


METHODS
As an experiment, the feasibility of automatic full-text searching of definitions was examined using the Encyclopaedia of Occupational Health and Safety, edited by the International Labour Organization (ILO), on CD-ROM.


CONCLUSIONS
The results were compared with the traditional index search by subject, using the paper version of the encyclopedia. The automatic search appeared successful; about 100 definitions were excerpted the automatic way.


CONCLUSIONS
As in most industries, finding accurate information is a necessity in the safety industry. The electronic document seems to be a powerful instrument as a source of definitions and can be quite easy to use by specialists as well as safety personnel in information processing.
Dryzek
Helena
H
Institute for Labour Protection, Central Institute for Labour Protection, Czerniakowska 16, 00-701 Warsaw, Poland. hedry@ciop.pl
D016251:CD-ROM; D016208:Databases, Factual; D005240:Feasibility Studies; D006801:Humans; D007255:Information Services / Q000592:standards*; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval; D016272:Occupational Health; D009626:Terminology as Topic