Best Practice for Transliteration of Materials in non-Latin Scripts
- anneadams@fas.harvard.edu
Best Practice
Transliteration of non-Latin scripts according to the ALA-LC Romanization Tables (https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/roman.html) for names, titles, imprints, and other transcribed information is strongly recommended.
Context
Historic practice required transliteration of non-Latin scripts. The presence of transliteration facilitates discovery for some users and improves searching to reduce creation of duplicate records by staff.
In Fall 2019, the Library of Congress began distributing MARC records created in LoC’s BIBFRAME pilot project through the Cataloging Distribution Service. These records typically contain transcription of the original script in the primary MARC fields and omit transliteration for metadata transcribed from non-Latin scripts. Given the value of transliteration for discovery and catalog management, however, it remains a best practice for Harvard catalogers to add transliterations in paired fields in the records they create or edit.
Metadata Standards Working Group, May 2020
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