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

PROBLEM: 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. METHOD: 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. DISCUSSION: 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. IMPACT ON INDUSTRY: 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.