NRCIG OCLC Global Council November 2013

Cendrella Habre

University Librarian, Lebanese American University

EMEARC Delegate

The mission of the Non-Roman Characters Interest Group (NRCIG) is to inform the Cooperative and OCLC’s strategic development about the issues of making OCLC’s products and services “work” in languages that use non-Roman characters.

Mission

To provide background information to the OCLC Board and Strategic Leadership Team (SLT) regarding the locations, sizes and importance of major Arabic-language collections and to investigate and report on the status of Arabic language in OCLC’s product development plans.

Charge

• Cendrella Habre, Chair

• Omar Farhoud, Information Systems Manager, LAU (Lebanon)

• Fares Jureidini, Logos (Distributor Lebanon)

• Asma Al-Kanan, Director, Library, American University of Kuwait

• William Kopycki, Field Director, Library of Congress, Egypt

• Magda El-Sherbini, Associate Professor and head of Cataloging Department, Ohio State University Libraries

• Martha Speirs, EMEARC Alternate Delegate, Dean, Library and Information Services, Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy

• Rebecca Youth, Catalog Librarian, University of Iowa Libraries & MELA member

OCLC Staff GCEC Rep

• Janet Lees Srichan Chancheewa

• Bemal Rajapatirana

• Arthur Smith

Members

51+

11-50

1-10

Institutions that Create Records for Arabic-Languages Resources

1,307

82

58

101+

11-100

1-10

Institutions with Holdings on Records for Arabic-language Resources

• Transliteration/Romanization

Tools are not user-friendly

Tools are unknown to users

Inconsistencies (In the US for example Romanization is performed by non-Arabic speaking staff)

• Subject Headings

Limited LCSH → Arabic topics

Translation of LCSH with modifications

Different Arabic SH Lists → Undiscoverable

• Names

Similar to SH

Complexities in Name Structure

• Users (Western vs. Arab)

What do they want?

• Technological lags

OCLC’s Z39.50 server is not enabled to search records in Arabic

Inconsistent use of MARC fields for Romanized diacritics

UNICODE

Indexing (non-filing characters for the ال) and the Hamza on the Alef ( ا,أ )

Issues and Challenges

• Transliteration/Romanization → LINK DATA • Subject Headings → LINK DATA → UNIFIED LIST OF SUBJECT HEADINGS (a project that should be

sponsored by OCLC) • Names

→ VIAF → LINK DATA

• Users (Western vs. Arab) → LINK DATA • Technological lags → Experts from the Arab World

Suggested Solutions

THANK YOU

Q&A

Museums, Archives and Libraries Interest Group

OCLC Global Council November 2013

Bert Looper Director, Tresoar EMEARC Delegate

Departing Delegate

Thank you, Annsofie Oscarsson

Departing OCLC Staff

Rich Skopin

Departing OCLC Staff

Janet Lees

Departing OCLC Staff

Kate Gaylord

Departing OCLC Staff

Phil Schieber

Departing OCLC Staff

Larry Olszewski

Thank you…

Safe travels…

See you in April!