Patent ID: 6999916

Claim:
An integrated method, over a wide area network having a server side and a client side, for user-directed acquisition of information relating to user-selected text of World Wide Web site pages, comprising: selecting by a user a word of web page text, whereby the user-selected word is accessible by an information retrieval function; selecting by a user from a plurality of reference sources and translation language pairs, at least one reference source and a translation language pair, whereby the user-selected reference source and user-selected translation language pair are accessible by an information retrieval function; accessing and retrieving from the user-selected reference source, using the information retrieval function, information relating to the user-selected word in accordance with the user-selected reference source and user-selected translation language pair; and displaying to the user, based on the accessed and retrieved related information, a related information data set, wherein the selecting and displaying are integrated into the web page, and whereby user-directed acquisition of information relating to user-selected text of World Wide Web site pages is achieved.