Cataloging in a foreign alphabet
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1YWAM_Tyler_Library
We have recently been given a collection of Korean books which I would like to catalog in Korean characters with both translation and transliteration. Is this possible in LibraryThing? Has anyone done anything similar. (Thankfully I have a Korean who will be doing the cataloging for me). Thanks for any help for direction.
2MarthaJeanne
In general, while LT will accept various alphabets, sorting on them is likely to not work well. Also, they will not autocombine, so if there are versions of the work in other languages and you want the books in the main work, you will need to manually combine them.
3aspirit
I'm not sure what you all are aiming to do, but I can point out a few features that have been useful to me in cataloguing translated books.
Common Knowledge
Work Page
Title fields:
Canonical -- best left empty unless the most commonly entered title is a mess of multiple translations with other info; then, enter only the title so everyone can see clean main headers and touchstones
Original (in the original language) -- useful in identifying the work in searches and for combinations
Alternative -- for other popular translations not already entered
Disambiguation notice -- for notes about what is or is not the same work, if the titles alone don't make that clear
Original language (in the site's language)
Common Knowledge
Work Page
Title fields:
Canonical -- best left empty unless the most commonly entered title is a mess of multiple translations with other info; then, enter only the title so everyone can see clean main headers and touchstones
Original (in the original language) -- useful in identifying the work in searches and for combinations
Alternative -- for other popular translations not already entered
Disambiguation notice -- for notes about what is or is not the same work, if the titles alone don't make that clear
Original language (in the site's language)
4bnielsen
I do a little bit of that with my Russian titles. Probably with the same purpose as you: To be able to find them using a transliterated version of author and/or title. I put a transliterated version of author and title into the Comments field.
Depending on how much you want to be able to check this afterwards, you might want to decide on exactly which transliteration you will use and enforce it by running a script of some sort once in a while.
With Russian I use a script to create the Russian title and author from the a transliterated version, so I can see immediately if I've made a mistake. But that's probably not the transliteration I want to put in comments.
Example:
Title: Без свидетелей
Author: Игорь Забелин
Summary: Без свидетелей by Игорь Забелин (1977)
Comments: Igor Zabelin: Bez svidetelej
As you can see Игорь is transliterated into Igor but so would Игор be, so I use "Igor\b Zabelin: Bez svidetelej" to make the Russian text and then put Igor Zabelin: Bez svidetelej into the Comments field.
Beware that for authors you might want to have several versions:
Anton Tjexov, Anton Tjechov, Anton Chekhov, Anton Tchekhov, Anton Tsjechof, et cetera?
Having decided on a transliteration I can use a script to check that if a book is in Russian then the Comments field should contain the transliterated version.
Depending on how much you want to be able to check this afterwards, you might want to decide on exactly which transliteration you will use and enforce it by running a script of some sort once in a while.
With Russian I use a script to create the Russian title and author from the a transliterated version, so I can see immediately if I've made a mistake. But that's probably not the transliteration I want to put in comments.
Example:
Title: Без свидетелей
Author: Игорь Забелин
Summary: Без свидетелей by Игорь Забелин (1977)
Comments: Igor Zabelin: Bez svidetelej
As you can see Игорь is transliterated into Igor but so would Игор be, so I use "Igor\b Zabelin: Bez svidetelej" to make the Russian text and then put Igor Zabelin: Bez svidetelej into the Comments field.
Beware that for authors you might want to have several versions:
Anton Tjexov, Anton Tjechov, Anton Chekhov, Anton Tchekhov, Anton Tsjechof, et cetera?
Having decided on a transliteration I can use a script to check that if a book is in Russian then the Comments field should contain the transliterated version.
5YWAM_Tyler_Library
Thank you all for your help and input. We have decided to put the title in Korean characters with an English translation in square brackets. Hoping to have good tags for searching. We have quite a few Koreans in our organization so they will be the main users. We thought transliteration would not be all that helpful for anyone.
6MarthaJeanne
Remember that square brackets are the sign for touchstones. This can be a problem if the titles are quoted in Talk.
7YWAM_Tyler_Library
Thanks. I didn't know that, and I'm not sure it would be an issue for us. But I did notice that my Korean cataloger is using regular parentheses, so problem avoided. ;-)
9aspirit
>8 Gershayim: I didn't. Will you elaborate?
10Gershayim
1) The data are not stable. For serious cataloging, one needs to be able to distinguish between not just works, but also expressions (different formats, editions, and translations) and manifestations (differences in publishing data). LT deliberately mashes together many expressions and all manifestations and defends this as a service to the "social" nature of the service. My copy of the Book of the Unnamed Midwife is an original published by Sybaritic in 2014. Imagine my surprise when I returned to the book a couple of days ago to discover that the publishing data had been changed to a different publisher and year. I changed it back, but I imagine its only a matter of time until it changes again.
2) There's no customization available for the internal form: a serious catalog would allow for selecting which fields to display, not just for the external/patron side, but also for the internal side. For me, a lot of fields presented in the basic LT form are needless to the point of absurdity. Why would I give a fig about how much a book weighs? Why, when my collection is only 3,300 volumes, would I worry about classification? However, I'm stuck with this and a host of pointless crap on the form.
3) People fill out the crap in the form: Yup, provide a slot for it, and some over achieving industrious idiot will fill every blank spot. This might sound like a petty point (and even perhaps plain old wrong in light the "more is better" approach favored by newbies and non-catalogers), but it's not: a significant element of a catalog's functionality is the capacity to reduce the white noise of garbage data. Reducing the "fluff" makes it easier for items to be found within the catalog, and eases the cataloger's responsibility to just what's important.
Finally, 4) It can't be counted on to support basic non-Roman scripts: So far as I know, most commercially available "real" catalogs support at the very least the JACKPHY RG languages (Japanese, Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Persian, Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, and Greek) with certain special characters excluded in some systems (the double vav from Yiddish, for instance). I know from experience that pasting Hebrew into LT is possible, but that actually typing it in is an ordeal, and when you import LC records containing vernacular into LT, the non-Roman script portion gets stripped out (at least that's how it was the last time I checked). I have not checked the search function; there's only so much disappointment I can take.
2) There's no customization available for the internal form: a serious catalog would allow for selecting which fields to display, not just for the external/patron side, but also for the internal side. For me, a lot of fields presented in the basic LT form are needless to the point of absurdity. Why would I give a fig about how much a book weighs? Why, when my collection is only 3,300 volumes, would I worry about classification? However, I'm stuck with this and a host of pointless crap on the form.
3) People fill out the crap in the form: Yup, provide a slot for it, and some over achieving industrious idiot will fill every blank spot. This might sound like a petty point (and even perhaps plain old wrong in light the "more is better" approach favored by newbies and non-catalogers), but it's not: a significant element of a catalog's functionality is the capacity to reduce the white noise of garbage data. Reducing the "fluff" makes it easier for items to be found within the catalog, and eases the cataloger's responsibility to just what's important.
Finally, 4) It can't be counted on to support basic non-Roman scripts: So far as I know, most commercially available "real" catalogs support at the very least the JACKPHY RG languages (Japanese, Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Persian, Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, and Greek) with certain special characters excluded in some systems (the double vav from Yiddish, for instance). I know from experience that pasting Hebrew into LT is possible, but that actually typing it in is an ordeal, and when you import LC records containing vernacular into LT, the non-Roman script portion gets stripped out (at least that's how it was the last time I checked). I have not checked the search function; there's only so much disappointment I can take.
11SandraArdnas
>10 Gershayim: (1) should be impossible. It is explicit LT policy that member data is sacred. No one has the way of changing your data even when it's patently wrong, let alone when there's no reason to meddle
12jjwilson61
I'm sorry that LT doesn't meet your standards. I believe it was designed to meet the needs of home libraries and was later extended to small lending libraries and it meets the needs of most of those quite well. If it doesn't meet your needs then you are welcome to try to find another product.
13bnielsen
>10 Gershayim: I think you are a bit negative in your approach. I can certainly also find flaws in LT, but not really these.
1) >11 SandraArdnas: already covered that.
2) You can use the "Your books" view to display and edit selected fields.
3) I don't know where you see this "pointless crap" and "garbage data" filled out by industrious idiot, newbies and non-catalogers. Maybe I'm just good at not noticing such stuff?
4) I have books in Russian and various other non-Roman scripts, but they import okay in LT. If there is a problem with a source like you say with LC and non-Roman script, you should report is as a bug so LT can fix it (it sounds like the z39.50 profiles don't match up perfectly).
1) >11 SandraArdnas: already covered that.
2) You can use the "Your books" view to display and edit selected fields.
3) I don't know where you see this "pointless crap" and "garbage data" filled out by industrious idiot, newbies and non-catalogers. Maybe I'm just good at not noticing such stuff?
4) I have books in Russian and various other non-Roman scripts, but they import okay in LT. If there is a problem with a source like you say with LC and non-Roman script, you should report is as a bug so LT can fix it (it sounds like the z39.50 profiles don't match up perfectly).
14macsbrains
I have a sizeable collection of books in Japanese, and don't have any problems with LT handling the script. As >2 MarthaJeanne: points out, sorting by title will not be exactly how a Korean librarian would do it, but it will group books together by initial character and, at least in Japanese, it's in a good enough order that I can find things when browsing a list.
At first, I used to put the transliterated title in the comments field, but then I stopped because it didn't suit my purposes (I am a home library without patrons). I still think that's a good place to put it, unless you plan on using that field for something else. It's a searchable and sortable field.
At first, I used to put the transliterated title in the comments field, but then I stopped because it didn't suit my purposes (I am a home library without patrons). I still think that's a good place to put it, unless you plan on using that field for something else. It's a searchable and sortable field.
15Gershayim
>11 SandraArdnas: And yet mine changed.
16Gershayim
>12 jjwilson61: Aw, don't be sorry.
I paid for a life time membership under the assumption that it was worthwhile and reliable, and, surprise, it's not.
I paid for a life time membership under the assumption that it was worthwhile and reliable, and, surprise, it's not.
17melannen
> 15 I'm sorry you're having trouble with LT.
LT is a site that has the capability to do a lot of different things for different people, but that makes it a very complex system, and it takes a while to know what's what sometimes.
The most important difference is that LT has book-level data (unique to your exact copy, your catalog, stable, unable to be changed by anyone but you) and work-level data (none of those things.) If you want to use LT only at the book level you can, but it's not always as clear as it could be when you are moving between the book level and the work level until you are used to the site - that is a weakness of LT.
1. It looks like you added The Book of the Unnamed Midwife from the Amazon source; while it's unlikely that would change the publication data on your book, Amazon isn't a great source to add from, as it's relying on Amazon's unstable data as its foundation, and LT data has been disrupted due to Amazon problems in the past. A library source or a careful manual add are much better choices if you're interested in precisely accurate data in your own catalog. No changes made by any other LT user can change your individual book's catalog data at the book level. If this is happening to you and it wasn't an issue with adding from Amazon, you should create a bug report; the devs take the stability of user data seriously.
2. I'm not sure what you mean by patron/internal side - LT has a version that's designed for libraries with patrons, which has more customization available, but it looks like you have a standard account for a personal library. Even then, if you go into your settings, there are options to permanently hide things like the height/weight/thickness fields, even on individual book pages, I believe.
3. LT does show "Green text" data in your catalog for some book-level fields, which is data you haven't filled in that is LT's best guess. Most of this isn't user-entered data, it's MARC data for your book imported from other libraries. It's true that LT isn't entirely designed for people who want to catalog manually according to a custom system; it's based around import of MARC data from other libraries. Most of the truly social data that isn't from library imports can be nearly completely hidden if you don't want to use the social aspects of LT.
4. I have Cyrillic, Armenian, Hanzi, and Kanji in my catalog with no problem, as well as a lot of extended-Roman characters. I'll admit I haven't tried typing most of them (and I would believe that directly typing languages that aren't left-to-right is a hassle on LT; it is in most of the English-language web) though I didn't have any trouble with directly entering the Cyrillic. LT does have a Hebrew-language version, https://il.librarything.com/ - unfortunately the translation was done crowdsourced and isn't complete, but I believe there were some specific changes made on that site to improve handling of Hebrew typing, so if you're doing a lot of Hebrew it might be worth a try.
LT is a site that has the capability to do a lot of different things for different people, but that makes it a very complex system, and it takes a while to know what's what sometimes.
The most important difference is that LT has book-level data (unique to your exact copy, your catalog, stable, unable to be changed by anyone but you) and work-level data (none of those things.) If you want to use LT only at the book level you can, but it's not always as clear as it could be when you are moving between the book level and the work level until you are used to the site - that is a weakness of LT.
1. It looks like you added The Book of the Unnamed Midwife from the Amazon source; while it's unlikely that would change the publication data on your book, Amazon isn't a great source to add from, as it's relying on Amazon's unstable data as its foundation, and LT data has been disrupted due to Amazon problems in the past. A library source or a careful manual add are much better choices if you're interested in precisely accurate data in your own catalog. No changes made by any other LT user can change your individual book's catalog data at the book level. If this is happening to you and it wasn't an issue with adding from Amazon, you should create a bug report; the devs take the stability of user data seriously.
2. I'm not sure what you mean by patron/internal side - LT has a version that's designed for libraries with patrons, which has more customization available, but it looks like you have a standard account for a personal library. Even then, if you go into your settings, there are options to permanently hide things like the height/weight/thickness fields, even on individual book pages, I believe.
3. LT does show "Green text" data in your catalog for some book-level fields, which is data you haven't filled in that is LT's best guess. Most of this isn't user-entered data, it's MARC data for your book imported from other libraries. It's true that LT isn't entirely designed for people who want to catalog manually according to a custom system; it's based around import of MARC data from other libraries. Most of the truly social data that isn't from library imports can be nearly completely hidden if you don't want to use the social aspects of LT.
4. I have Cyrillic, Armenian, Hanzi, and Kanji in my catalog with no problem, as well as a lot of extended-Roman characters. I'll admit I haven't tried typing most of them (and I would believe that directly typing languages that aren't left-to-right is a hassle on LT; it is in most of the English-language web) though I didn't have any trouble with directly entering the Cyrillic. LT does have a Hebrew-language version, https://il.librarything.com/ - unfortunately the translation was done crowdsourced and isn't complete, but I believe there were some specific changes made on that site to improve handling of Hebrew typing, so if you're doing a lot of Hebrew it might be worth a try.
18SandraArdnas
>15 Gershayim: So report it to staff and get to the bottom of it because that is not as the system is designed. Only site-wide data can change without your input (and amazon covers)
19Cynfelyn
>10 Gershayim: "My copy of the Book of the Unnamed Midwife is an original published by Sybaritic in 2014. Imagine my surprise when I returned to the book a couple of days ago to discover that the publishing data had been changed to a different publisher and year. I changed it back, but I imagine its only a matter of time until it changes again.
Just to be 100%, boringly, pedantically clear, the Book of the Unnamed Midwife data that you have found changed is your data in your catalogue (which you have made private, so the rest of us can't see), and not the work's Common Knowledge?
I must say the current CK Original publication date of 2016 looks odd when the book was also winning awards in 2014.
Just to be 100%, boringly, pedantically clear, the Book of the Unnamed Midwife data that you have found changed is your data in your catalogue (which you have made private, so the rest of us can't see), and not the work's Common Knowledge?
I must say the current CK Original publication date of 2016 looks odd when the book was also winning awards in 2014.
