Standards
for Archival Description: A Handbook
Home | Table of Contents
Most archivists in the United States only work with materials in English or the major European languages. However, a growing number of repositories are confronted with the difficulty of describing collections in languages represented in nonroman scripts, such as Arabic, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Chinese, and Japanese.
The current limits on the number of characters recognizable by most computer systems in the U.S. often mandate that nonroman scripts be transliterated or romanized. Romanization uses phonetics to reproduce the sound of the word as it would be pronounced by a native speaker. The process is problematic in many ways. For instance, Ronald Hagler cites no fewer than fourteen variations in the romanization of Anton Chekhov's surname.1 For most bibliographic applications in the U.S., Hagler indicates that the preferred romanization rules are those developed by the Library of Congress and approved by the American Library Association.
Most efforts at romanization are likely to be made in the context of preparing catalog records for integration with bibliographic records in roman alphabet languages. In addition, some archives are using romanization to create labels and targets for microform copies of materials in nonroman languages, thereby facilitating their incorporation in English-based cataloging and filing schemes and making the eye-legible labels understandable to English-speaking users.
Some of the difficulties with trying to represent other scripts in roman characters may be overcome by the adoption of extended character sets allowing computers to process the original scripts directly.2 A significant advance in this area is represented in the adoption of ANSI/NISO Z39.64, East Asian Character Code for Bibliographic Use. Work has also begun on "Unicode," which would use 16 bytes, instead of the eight bytes now used by ASCII, to provide a single set of unique codes for characters in all languages. The work in this area is being led by the Research Libraries Group, along with a consortium of computer and software manufacturers (see further discussion of "Unicode" in introduction to Chapter 7, p. 151-152).3
All of the romanization standards developed by NISO listed below have been withdrawn by ANSI because they have passed their ten-year limit for reaffirmation. Some are now actively being revised while work on others is dormant. Walt Crawford speculates that most of them may be permanently withdrawn by NISO in favor of recommending that users simply follow LC practices for romanization. Because of the uncertainty about the future of the individual standards, the ongoing work on Unicode that will also affect their use, and the relatively limited application that is likely to be made of them in U.S. archival repositories, full entries are not given for each standard. Readers are encouraged to consult the corresponding entries in Crawford's Technical Standards for Librarians (2nd ed.) for additional information on the Z39 standards.
Aliprand, Joan M. "Arabic Script on RLIN." Library Hi Tech, 10:4 (1992): 59-80.
Aliprand, Joan M. "Nonroman Scripts in the Bibliographic Environment." Information Technology and Libraries 11 (June 1992): 105-119.
Aliprand, Joan M., editor. "Special Section: A Decade of East Asian Scripts on RLIN." Information Technology and Libraries 12 (December 1993): 423-431.
Aman, Mohammed M., ed. Cataloging and Classification of Non-Western Material: Concerns, Issues and Practices. Phoenix, AZ: Oryx Press, 1980.
Crawford, Walt. MARC for Library Use: Understanding Integrated USMARC. 2nd ed. Chapter 16, "Nonroman Text in USMARC," 187-201. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1989.
Crawford, Walt. Technical Standards for Librarians. 2nd ed. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1991. Contains individual descriptive entries for each ANSI/NISO Z39 standard.
Hagler, Ronald. The Bibliographic Record and Information Technology. 2nd ed. Chicago: American Library Association, 1991, 275-279.
Har-Nicolescu, S. "Romanized and Transliterated Databases of Asian-language Materials: History, Problems, and Prospects." In Automated Systems for Access to Multilingual and Multiscript Library Materials, edited by Christine Bossmeyer and Stephen W. Massil, 13-29. New York: K.G. Waur, 1987.
Wellisch, Hans H. The Conversion of Scripts: Its Nature, History and Utilization. New York: Wiley, 1978.
Wellisch, Hans H. "Romanization." In Indexing A to Z, 337-346. New York: H.W. Wilson, 1992.
Arranged alphabetically by language (following the comprehensive tables):
ALA-LC Romanization Tables: Transliteration Schemes for Non-Roman Scripts. 1991. Randall K. Barry, comp. and ed.; Library of Congress. Paper. ISBN 0-8444-0706-2. Available from LC CDS. $24.00.
LC Romanization Tables and Cataloging Policies. 1990. Compiled by Sally C. Tseng; assisted by David C. Tseng and Linda C. Tseng. Cloth (270 p.). ISBN 0-8108-2353-5. LC 90-42792. Available from Scarecrow Press. $32.50.
ANSI Z39.12-1972 (R1984). System for the Romanization of Arabic. NISO. Paper (8 p.). ISBN 0-88738-989-9. Out of print.
ISO 233:1984. Documentation--Transliteration of Arabic characters into Latin characters. ISO Technical Committee 46. Paper (7 p.). Available from ANSI. $28.00. Also published in ISO Standards Handbook 1: Documentation and Information 3rd ed. (Geneva, Switzerland: ISO, 1988), 361-367.
ANSI Z39.37-1979. System for the Romanization of Armenian. NISO. Paper (7 p.). ISBN 0-88738-967-8. Out of print.
ISO 7098:1991. Documentation--Romanization of Chinese. 2nd ed. ISO Technical Committee 46. Paper (5 p.). Available from ANSI. $25.00. The 1982 version was published in ISO Standards Handbook 1: Documentation and Information, 3rd ed. (Geneva, Switzerland: ISO, 1988), 400-404.
ISO/R 843:1968. International system for the transliteration of Greek characters into Latin characters. ISO Technical Committee 46. Paper (3 p.). Available from ANSI. $22.00. Also published in ISO Standards Handbook 1: Documentation and Information 3rd ed. (Geneva, Switzerland: ISO, 1988), 376-378.
ANSI Z39.25-1975. Romanization of Hebrew. NISO. Paper (15 p.). ISBN 0-88738-977-5. Out of print.
ISO 259:1984. Documentation--Transliteration of Hebrew characters into Latin characters. ISO Technical Committee 46. Paper (8 p.). Available from ANSI. $28.00. Also published in ISO Standards Handbook 1: Documentation and Information 3rd ed. (Geneva, Switzerland: ISO, 1988), 368-375.
Hebraica Cataloging: A Guide to ALA/LC Romanization and Descriptive Cataloging. 1987. Paul Maher, prep.; Library of Congress. Paper (72 p.). ISBN 0-8444-0567-1. Available from LC CDS. $15.00.
ANSI Z39.11-1972 (R1983). System for the Romanization of Japanese. NISO. Paper (11 p.). ISBN 0-88738-990-2. Out of print.
ISO 3602:1989. Documentation--Romanization of Japanese (kana script). ISO Technical Committee 46. Paper (6 p.). Available from ANSI. $25.00.
ANSI Z39.35-1979. System for the Romanization of Lao, Khmer, and Pali. NISO. Paper (14 p.). ISBN 0-88738-968-6. Out of print.
ANSI Z39.24-1976. System for the Romanization of Slavic Cyrillic Characters. NISO. Paper (10 p.). ISBN 0-88738-978-3. Out of print.
ISO 9:1986. Documentation--Transliteration of Slavic Cyrillic characters into Latin characters. ISO Technical Committee 46. Paper (8 p.). Available from ANSI. $28.00. Also published in ISO Standards Handbook 1: Documentation and Information 3rd ed. (Geneva, Switzerland: ISO, 1988), 353-360.
1 Ronald Hagler, The Bibliographic Record and Information Technology, 2nd ed. (Chicago: American Library Association, 1991), 276.
2 East Asian scripts were implemented on the Research Libraries Information Network (RLIN) in 1983 and on OCLC in 1986. RLIN has since implemented Cyrillic (1986), Hebrew (1988), and Arabic (1991). See discussions in articles by Joan M. Aliprand listed under Further reading, p. 176.
3 Walt Crawford, Technical Standards: An Introduction for Librarians, 2nd ed. (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1991): 231-232.
Standards
for Archival Description: A Handbook
© 1994 Society of American Archivists. All Rights Reserved.