ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 56 | April 2002
A Matter of
Character:
Developments in the CJK Service
Qian tu shi guang ming de, dao lu shi qu zhe dethis commonly used, if slightly politicised Chinese saying, seems to sum up the past year of activity for the Australian National Chinese Japanese Korean (CJK) Service. Loosely translated as the future is bright but the path to the future is winding, it captures the efforts, challenges and work invested in a number of exciting new developments for the CJK Service.
All these developments have been driven by the recommendations arising from the National Librarys Review of the Australian National Chinese Japanese Korean (CJK) Service at http://cjk.kinetica.nla.gov.au/screens/libinfo.05.html, which was completed in early 2001. The review had at its core the aims of developing and improving the CJK Service, and involved extensive consultation with CJK libraries both during the review and in this implementation phase.
System enhancements were prominent in 2001 with the installation of two new modules to the CJK Services Innopac software. A Z39.50 client and the Millennium Cataloguing module (MilCAT) were added to the CJK system. These two modules in combination support real-time copy cataloguing and extend the range of data sources available to libraries and end users, facilitating both resource discovery and copy cataloguing of CJK language materials.
Significant progress was also made with character support in the CJK database web interface. A recent upgrade to the CJK WebOPACs Unicode tables now means that all three CJK languages and their respective character sets are well supported through off-the-shelf products. This removes significant interface barriers for end users and smaller libraries, as they no longer have the burden and expense of installing, learning and maintaining other specialised CJK character software packages.
Standards also featured prominently with the spotlight on Pinyin Romanisation guidelines, and Pinyin authority records.
Australian libraries follow the Library of Congress (LC) Pinyin Romanisation guidelines. However LCs current policies, as encapsulated in New Chinese Romanisation Guidelines at www.loc.gov/cat/pinyin/romcover.html and Pinyin Romanisation Guidelines: Clarification of practice at www.loc.gov/cat/pinyin/rom1.html, are unclear on how to romanise Chinese geographic names. CJK staff evaluated and assisted in the preparation of the paper, Romanising Chinese Geographic Names for Bibliographic Description, at http://cjk.kinetica.nla.gov.au/screens/new2.html, by Ms Wan Wong (NLA). This paper was recommended for use by member libraries in conjunction with LC authority files in order to set up geographic names that comply with LC policy.
Progress on the recommendation to acquire and load the file of CJK Authority records from the Library of Congress (LC), by July 2002 is also on schedule. The Chinese Pinyin Name Authority File was purchased last year and plans are underway to load these records in April 2002. The file contains approximately 160,000 authority records, converted from Wade-Giles to Pinyin Romanisation. It was generated as part of the Pinyin Conversion Project undertaken by LC, Research Libraries Group (RLG) and OCLC. Regular updates on progress with this project are available from the Pinyin Conversion Project web pages at www.loc.gov/catdir/pinyin/pinyin.html
The CJK Service also grew in membership with the Japan Foundation Library in Sydney joining the Services in May 2001. The Japan Foundation Library has a collection of 20 000 titles of mostly Japanese cultural topic books and Japanese language study material written in both English and Japanese.
To find out more about the CJK Service and current CJK projects, please
visit our web site at http://cjk.nla.gov.au/
Bemal Rajapatirana
| Contents list for this issue of Gateways |
Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: dthomas@nla.gov.au