How should we proceed to change headings for the conventional place names on our own bibliographic records?
A – You might want to wait to see how many of these headings will be changed by the pinyin conversion program. Of course, you could change them before then, in order to have access points on your bib records conform to the headings in the name authority file. Q – If headings on bibliographic records are changed to pinyin form in advance of machine conversion, won’t a lot of these headings be re-converted by the conversion program to a form that is not the correct one? A -The Wade-Giles system romanizes Chinese in single-syllable units. Some Wade-Giles syllables are the same as their pinyin counterparts (ming = ming), while some differ (ch’ien = qian). However, there are 61 “common” syllables which, although they are used in both systems, indicate different sounds. For example, Wade-Giles t’a converts to pinyin ta, but Wade-Giles ta converts to pinyin da. This being the case, double conversion could occur if one of these common syllables were changed to pinyin form before machine conver
Related Questions
- What if two (or more) different headings for the same person or corporate body are found in LAC-issued bibliographic records?
- We’ve been inputting non-Latin headings in bibliographic records for many years—will it be possible to make use of this data?
- How should we proceed to change headings for the conventional place names on our own bibliographic records?
