Natural language processing and digital libraries

As one envisions a document model where language, physical location and med ium - electronic, paper or other - impose no barrier to effective use, natu ral language processing will play an increasing role, especially in the con text of digital libraries. This paper presents language components based mostly on finite-state techno logy that improve our capabilities for exploring, enriching and interacting in various ways with documents. This ranges from morphology to part-of-spe ech tagging, NP extraction and shallow parsing. We then focus on a series o f on-going projects which illustrate how this technology is already impacti ng the building and sharing of knowledge through digital libraries.