Discusses the adoption of the pinyin Romanization standard over Wade-Giles and considers the impact on retrieval in online library catalogs. Describes an investigation that tested three factors that could influence retrieval efficiency: the number of usable syllables, the average number of letters per syllable, and users' familiarity with the…

Discusses the romanization of Chinese characters in U.S. library bibliographic records; considers the advantages and disadvantages of changing from Wade-Giles romanization to pinyin; describes word division problems; proposes an alternative that uses a computer program; and considers the future possibilities of a multiscript, general purpose…

Discusses some of the problems in creating bibliographic descriptions for materials published in languages which employ nonroman scripts, analyzes the impact of online catalog systems in overcoming some of these difficulties, and describes some of the computer hardware, particularly terminals, being developed to handle nonroman scripts. (JL)

Discusses bibliographic access to documents in nonroman scripts and the need for standards for the way different scripts are encoded for data processing. A microcomputer-based system that transliterates Cyrillic text to a romanized version and back to Cyrillic is proposed. (10 references) (MES)

Description of the conversion of San Diego State University Library's Asian collection from catalog cards to online catalog through OCLC discusses technical problems involved in creating databases with Chinese, Japanese, and Korean vernacular characters. Ambiguities created by romanization and decision to convert the collection only in romanized…

Considers whether or not library materials in East Asian languages should be integrated into the general collection. Romanized access through a Latin-script library catalog and nonromanized access through a browsing collection are considered. After exploring the difficulties in romanizing Chinese and Japanese scripts, a separate collection is…

It is generally accepted in the library world that an automated catalog means more accessible data for patrons, greater productivity for librarians, and an improvement in the sharing of bibliographic data among libraries. While the desirability of automation is not a controversial issue, some aspects of automating remain problematic. This article…