Electronic version of the encyclopaedia of occupational health and safety as a source of definitions

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.

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.

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.

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.