The main aim of the project is to provide a single access point to all research material in Chinese in the UK, and to give a boost to this initiative by a focused programme of substantial retrospective record conversion, concentrating on the most recent (post-Cultural Revolution) scholarship in all fields.
Construction of a union catalogue of Chinese research materials in the UK, which will provide a single access point to all major Chinese language collections in the UK, namely the British Library, and the university libraries of Oxford (Bodleian Library), Cambridge, London (SOAS Library), Leeds (Brotherton Library), Edinburgh and Durham.
The construction of the database is taking place in Oxford, using allegro software in conjunction with other utilities. Concurrently, retrospective record conversion is taking place in each of the participating institutions, and is initially focussing on materials published since the end of the Cultural Revolution(1978). By the end of the project, there will exist a publicly accessible union catalogue of all automated records for Chinese language materials in the institutions listed above, with machinery in place for the automatic updating of the database for an indefinite period thereafter.
The biggest source of controversy in the cataloguing of Chinese, Japanese and Korean materials is not bibliographical format, but how data should be entered into that format, especially in the areas of encoding and romanisation.
The use of four different library systems (in-house, allegro, INNOPAC, Voyager), and three formats (in-house, UK and US MARC) in UK sinological libraries would not itself prevent the straightforward provision of a single access point to the databases (through the Z39.50 protocol, for example), but the situation is further complicated by the adoption of radically different standards in character coding (Big-5, GB, EACC) and romanisation - although there is no dispute over the use of Hanyu Pinyin as the transliteration system, opinions vary as to whether there should be syllable aggregation or not. For more information about standards and formats, see the project website (details below).
The database is now publicly accessible, but is not yet a finished product. It is constantly being revised and re-shaped, and is even liable to disconnection without notice. It currently contains approximately 190,000 records (probably representing at least 130,000 different titles) from Oxford, Cambridge, Leeds, the British Library, and Durham. Records from SOAS and Edinburgh will be added in the near future. Particular attention has been paid to the homogenization of data into a common format, and the development of a simple and effective search interface, enabling the reader to gain rapid access to the required information through the entry of minimal search terms.
Mr David Helliwell
Tel:
Fax: 01865 277 032
E-mail: djh@bodley.ox.ac.uk
Content: Gill Davenport
Last updated 5 September 2002