The Technical Processing Committee of the Council on East Asian Libraries (CEAL) agreed in 1996 that the most valuable contribution that it could make to the East Asian library community would be the updating and expansion of the AACR2 (Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, 2nd ed.) workbook for East Asian publications.
The original workbook was compiled in 1983 by Beatrice Ohta of the Library of Congress (LC) and Thomas Lee of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Beatrice and Thomas were assisted in their efforts by several other CEAL librarians. Their workbook was intended to provide guidelines and examples for treating materials in East Asian languages, and to supplement AACR2 training institutes by addressing special problems faced by East Asian catalogers. The workbook, covering Chapters 1, 2, 12, 21-25 and Appendix C (Numerals), was widely utilized by catalogers outside the Library of Congress.
In proposing a revision of the workbook, the Technical Processing Committee primarily intended to show non-LC catalogers of CJK material, many of whom are non-native speakers, how AACR2 and the LCRIs (Library of Congress Rule Interpretations) applied to the material they cataloged by providing actual illustrations from CJK bibliographic records, in the same manner that AACR2 and the LCRIs provide examples in western languages. The committee wished not only to update the workbook to reflect changes to AACR2 and the LCRIs, but also to broaden the scope to include the rules that govern specific types of material. Therefore, this revision includes examples of maps and atlases (Chapter 3), music and sound recordings (Chapters 5-6), motion pictures and videorecordings (Chapter 7), electronic resources (Chapter 9), and references (Chapter 26). Examples were to be presented in a format that would be informative to catalogers.
The committee asked that the revision be undertaken as a joint project by CEAL and LC. Committee members were confident that they could compile examples, but felt that the finished product could only be considered authoritative if it were reviewed by staff at the Library of Congress. Because the Library strongly discourages cataloging by example, the Director for Cataloging agreed to make the revision a joint project only if the examples were clearly intended to be illustrative and informative, in the same manner as the examples that appear in AACR2 and the LCRIs.
An impressive number of CEAL members and LC employees contributed to the workbook. Examples for individual chapters of AACR2 and related LCRIs were compiled by ten CEAL members from outside libraries: Yu-lan Chou of Berkeley, Vickie Fu Doll of Kansas, Tomoko Goto of British Columbia, Wen-ling Liu of Indiana, Hideyuki Morimoto of Berkeley and Columbia, Seunghi Paek of Harvard, Meng-fen Su of Harvard and Texas, Amy Tsiang of UCLA, Reiko Yoshimura of the Freer Gallery, and Abraham Yu of UC-Irvine. Work began in early 1997. Compilers consulted with their colleagues in order to provide a wide range of examples in all three of the CJK languages. The last of these compilations was sent to LC in December 1999.
CEAL members continued to contribute to the project after the initial compilations had been completed. Ai-lin Yang of UC-Berkeley keyed in the Chinese portion of Chapter 25, Uniform Titles, and Hee-Sook Shin of Columbia University is currently keying in the romanized and Korean portions of that lengthy chapter.
It took more than one year to find software with an extensive character set that produced compatible CJK scripts, and a platform on which to use it at LC. In the year 2000, the combination of Twinbridge CJK Partner, running on Windows NT, gave us the compatible scripts and extensive character sets needed for the project. Because the compilers had used the hardware and software that was available to them, their compilations were incompatible not only with each other but also with Twinbridge. Therefore, in most cases, LC staff were able to use only the roman text that they had provided. All non-roman text and a great deal of romanization had to be keyed in manually here at LC (by Young Ki Lee, Sook Hee Weidman, Sonya Lee and myself). That time-consuming process has largely been completed. Fortunately, when it came time to switch to Microsoft with Unicode, most of the text converted successfully. It was easier to create non-roman script on Microsoft with Unicode, but dealing with the indentations on existing text was a time-consuming nightmare.
The first draft of each chapter was then edited by a Chinese, Japanese, and Korean cataloger from LC's Regional and Cooperative Cataloging Division (RCCD) (Beatrice Ohta, Sumiko Takaramura and Youngsook Park respectively). Appropriate chapters were also edited by specialists in the Geography and Map Division, Special Materials Cataloging Division, and the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division. Examples were checked for accuracy and appropriateness. A certain balance was sought so that each of the three languages was about equally represented. This step in the process, begun in the fall of 2001, has now largely been completed. Sumiko made changes directly on the computer, but everyone else wrote out their changes onto hard copy; I then made the changes on the computer. Because of the passage of time, a further editorial step had to be introduced: changes to the text of AACR2 and the LCRIs had to be identified, and examples adjusted where necessary.
Completed chapters were then sent to the Cataloging Policy and Support Office (CPSO) at the Library of Congress. Following their review, I have begun to key in the corrections that were indicated. MARC format was provided by the compilers; tagging was added in some instances, and margins, indentation, and typescript was aligned.
The examples provided by the compilers formed the basis of this work. Their contribution was supplemented by LC staff, so that there would be a rough balance between languages. All examples have been taken from Korean, Japanese, and Chinese language bibliographic records. Because the intention is to show just what CJK cataloging looks like, some repetition may occur; so an edition statement in an electronic resource may be transcribed in the same manner as one on a map or monograph. Some examples appear only in roman form, just as they do on bibliographic records.
The examples follow the text of AACR2 and the LCRIs themselves. Efforts were made to find examples of each and every rule, so that a rough balance in coverage would occur within each chapter. But sometimes an example of a given rule or LCRI could not be located. The absence of an example for a given rule or LCRI does not imply that the rule is not applicable to East Asian material, nor that there may be no examples of that rule in the corpus of bibliographic records of East Asian material. Notes were added by the compilers and reviewers.
The committee felt that a digital version of the examples should be posted on the Web, rather than printing them in book or notebook form, to make them conveniently available to a wide audience. Chapters 1 (General Rules for Description), 2 (Books, Pamphlets and Printed Sheets), 5 (Music), and 6 (Sound Recordings) are being posted on the CPSO home page now, and Chapters 7 (Motion Pictures and Videorecodings) and 9 (Electronic Resources) and Appendix C (Numerals) will be posted this summer. Additional chapters will be reviewed by CPSO, edited, and posted in the coming months.
At present, no provision has been made for updating the examples to keep current with changes to the LCRIs and AACR2. Hopefully the CEAL Committee on Technical Processing will find the resources to initiate timely updates and send them to LC for review and posting.
This is a work in progress. My colleagues at LC and I will continue to review and edit the compilations as time permits, and then post them on the CPSO home page when they have been completed.
Phil Melzer
May 24, 2004
Chapter 1 - General Rules for Description
Chapter 2 - Books, Pamphlets, and Printed Sheets
Chapter 5 - Music
Chapter 6 - Sound Recordings
Chapter 7 - Motion Pictures and Videorecordings
The chapter below, posted on January 4, 2006, is in draft form. Please send comments to Philip Melzer, Korean/Chinese Cataloging Team, [email protected]. Comments must be received no later than February 28, 2006. Chapter 3 - Cartographic Materials
The chapters below, posted November 3, 2004, are in draft form. Please send comments to Philip Melzer, Korean/Chinese Cataloging Team, [email protected]. Comments must be received no later than December 17, 2004.