BEYOND THE ENGLISH CATALOG
ALA Annual Meeting 1997
San Francisco
Technical Standards for Library Automation (TESLA) Program
Compiled and with annotations by Joan M. Aliprand, Senior Analyst, The Research Libraries Group, Inc
USMARC
USMARC Format for Bibliographic Data, including Guidelines for Content Designation, prepared by Network Development and MARC Standards Office, 1994 ed., Cataloging Distribution Service, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C, 1994- ISBN 0-8444-0809-3
USMARC Format for Authority Data, including Guidelines for Content Designation, prepared by Network Development and MARC Standards Office, 1993 ed., Cataloging Distribution Service, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C, 1993- ISBN 0-8444-0802-6
The 066 and 880 fields defined for the USMARC Format for Authority Data have not yet been implemented by the Library of Congress or any of the utilities. See also MARBI Discussion Paper 100.
USMARC Specifications for Record Structure, Character Sets, and Exchange Media, prepared by Network Development and MARC Standards Office, 1994 ed., Cataloging Distribution Service, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C, 1994. ISBN 0-8444-0746-1
Includes the Latin, Cyrillic, Hebraic and Arabic character sets authorized for USMARC. See also MARBI Proposal 97-14.
American National Standards Institute, East Asian Character Code for Bibliographic Use, Transaction, New Brunswick, NJ, 1990. (ANSI Z39.64-1989). ISBN 0-88738-947-3
This is the East Asian character set authorized for USMARC.
"Nonroman text in USMARC." In: Crawford, Walt, MARC for Library Use: Understanding Integrated USMARC, 2d ed. (G. K. Hall, Boston, 1989), pp. 187-201. ISBN 0-8161-1887-6; 0-8161-1889-2 (pbk.)
An introduction to USMARC by a well-known expert on library automation.
CRITIQUES OF ROMANIZATION
Weinberg, Bella, "Transliteration in Documentation," Journal of Documentation 30:18-31 (1974).
The earliest attack on romanization in library literature that the compiler has found.
Spalding, C. Sumner, "Romanization Reexamined," Library Resources
& Technical Services 21:3-12 (1977).
Correspondence, Library Resources & Technical Services 21:303-305
(1977).
Revisits some of the points made by Weinberg, but important because of the prestige of the author. Includes good examples.
Wellisch, Hans H., "Script Conversion and Bibliographic Control of Documents in Dissimilar Scripts: Problems and Alternatives," International Library Review 10:3-22 (1978).
Professor Wellisch is arguably the most published library expert in the field of non-Roman scripts.
Aliprand, Joan M., "Nonroman Scripts in the Bibliographic Environment," Information Technology and Libraries, 11:105-119 (1992).
Includes an attack on romanization on the grounds of information distortion.
CHARACTER SETS
This section includes only some of the character set standards that have been established.
USMARC: See section on USMARC above.
International Organization for Standardization, Documentation and Information, 3rd ed., Geneva, 1988. (ISO Standards Handbook, vol. 1). ISBN 9-2671-0144-7
The character sets developed by ISO/TC46 and used in UNIMARC are included in this handbook. TC46 standards are also published separately by ISO.
The Unicode Consortium, The Unicode Standard, Version 2.0, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1996. ISBN 0-201-48345-9
The 16-bit multiscript character set developed by a consortium of leading companies in the information industry.
International Organization for Standardization/International Electrotechnical Committee, Information Technology -- Universal Multiple-Octet Coded Character Set (UCS), Part 1: Architecture and Basic Multilingual Plane, Geneva, 1993. (ISO/IEC 10646-1:1993).
The Unicode Standard is compatible with this International Standard.
Ksar, Michael Y., "Untying Tongues," ISO Bulletin (June 1993) pp. 2-8.
An introduction to International Standard ISO/IEC 10646 by the Convenor of the Working Group which developed it.
WORKS ON SCRIPTS
Nakanishi, Akira, Writing Systems of the World, Tuttle, Tokyo, 1980. ISBN 0-8048-1293-4; 0-8048-1654-9 (pbk.)
Small, but chock-full of information and easy to use.
Von Ostermann, Georg F., Manual of Foreign Languages, 4th. ed. rev. & enl., Central Book Co., New York, 1959.
Another classic reference work.
Wellisch, Hans H., The Conversion of Scripts: Its Nature, History, and Utilization, Wiley, New York, 1978. ISBN 0-471-01620-9
The authoritative work on this topic.
Coulmas, Florian, The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems, Blackwell, Cambridge, MA, 1996. ISBN 0-631-19446-0
Diringer, David, The Alphabet, 3d ed., Funk and Wagnalls, New York, 1968.
Robinson, Andrew, The Story of Writing, Thames and Hudson, London, New York, 1995. ISBN 0-500-01665-8
The World's Writing Systems, edited by Peter T. Daniels and William Bright, Oxford University Press, New York, 1996. ISBN 0-19-507993-0
LIBRARY-SPECIFIC WORKS
Cataloging and Classification of Non-Western Material: Concerns, Issues and Practices (edited by Mohammed M. Aman), Oryx Press, Phoenix, 1980.
The bulk of the book consists of chapters dealing with a specific script or language from various perspectives (including subject cataloging).
Clews, John, Language Automation Worldwide: The Development of Character Set Standards, Sesame Publications, Harrogate, Yorkshire, U.K., 1988. ISBN 1-87009-501-4 (pbk)
Although dated, this work contains useful overviews of specific scripts.
Automated Systems for Access to Multilingual and Multiscript Library Materials: Problems and Solutions, Saur, Munchen, 1987. ISBN 3-598-21768-4
Automated Systems for Access to Multilingual and Multiscript Library Materials: Proceedings of the Second IFLA Satellite Meeting, Madrid, August 18-19, 1993, Saur, Munchen, 1994. ISBN 3-598-21797-8
OTHER CITATIONS
Kano, Nadine, Developing International Software for Windows 95 and Windows NT, Microsoft Press, Redmond, WA, 1995. ISBN 1-556-15840-8
Despite the title, contains much information of general use (for example, national keyboard layouts).
Lunde, Ken, Understanding Japanese Information Processing, O'Reilly, Sebastopol, CA, 1993. ISBN 1-565-92043-0
The definitive English-language work on this topic. Now out of print, but a revision "Understanding CJKV Information Processing" is expected to be published in 1997.
O'Donnell, Sandra Martin, Programming for the World: A Guide to Internationalization, PRT Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1994. ISBN 0-13-722190-8
Becker, Joseph D., "Multilingual Word Processing," Scientific American 251:96-107 (1984).
The classic paper by a leader in multiscript computing.
Maintained by
jennie@reed.edu
Last modified 26 June 1997