Language and character encoding

Language in the search interface

If your browser has Swedish selected as the language choice, navigation, headings, guiding texts, and other general text information will be displayed in Swedish. If any other language is specified in the browser settings, the corresponding texts will be displayed in English. But you can also change the language in the interface itself by using the language selection button at the top right of the menu.

Cataloguing language

Metadata is displayed in the language it is registered. Swedish is normally used as a cataloguing language in Alvin, ie. descriptions, subject words and other notes are registered in Swedish. However, there are relatively large exceptions in the form of older databases, often results from research projects, which have been migrated to Alvin, where mainly English has been used as a cataloguing language. This means that the metadata in Alvin consists of descriptions in mixed languages ​​and for comprehensive searches, search terms are recommended in both Swedish and English.

Diacritics and accents

Alvin's search engine makes no difference to diacritics or accented characters and basic characters. A search on "linne" gives the same results as a search on "Linné" and a search on "bada" gives the same results as a search on "båda".

Character encoding

Unicode UTF-8 is used to store metadata in Alvin. Titles or other information registered with, for example, Cyrillic or Arabic alphabet can thus be searched with corresponding characters directly in the search box. However, if titles are listed in a font other than the Latin alphabet, the addition of a romanised alternative title is recommended upon registration.