Den flerspråkiga bibliotekskatalogen: Hantering av icke-latinsk skrift på bibliotek
(2006)Division of ALM and Digital Cultures
- Abstract
- The main purpose of this thesis has been to investigate librarians opinions about the need for and possibility to use non-roman script in library catalogues. We have also investigated the routines of handling materials in non-roman scripts in two Swedish libraries. The investigation was made in the light of the recent shift in character set in the Swedish National Library Catalogue Libris. This change will enable use of multiple writing systems in the future.
Our findings are that a multicultural society requires special consideration to the needs of citizens who speak other languages than the majority of the population. This becomes difficult when the languages spoken have a different writing system than the one used by the majority. The... (More) - The main purpose of this thesis has been to investigate librarians opinions about the need for and possibility to use non-roman script in library catalogues. We have also investigated the routines of handling materials in non-roman scripts in two Swedish libraries. The investigation was made in the light of the recent shift in character set in the Swedish National Library Catalogue Libris. This change will enable use of multiple writing systems in the future.
Our findings are that a multicultural society requires special consideration to the needs of citizens who speak other languages than the majority of the population. This becomes difficult when the languages spoken have a different writing system than the one used by the majority. The solution to transcribe or transliterate these languages has shown problematic especially in terms of information retrieval. Finding and hiring library educated staff with knowledge of different languages is also a problem, especially for libraries who cater to many diverse ethnic groups. Since handling non-roman script in computer systems has progressed in recent years it is now possible to use multiple writing systems in library catalogues. The most wide-spread character set for using multiple writing systems is unicode, which is why we have focused on this character set in our thesis. The use of unicode in Swedish library systems is progressing slowly however, and some libraries are developing local solutions to the problem with non-roman script in the catalogue. This despite the fact that a uniform standard is more efficient for sharing information in a computer based environment.
Our empirical study showed that there is a clearly stated need to adjust library services to fit the needs of users whose languages differ from the majority in Sweden, especially then these languages have non roman script.
Our method is based on empirical research through qualitative interviews as well as extensive literature studies to give our study a firm theoretical background. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/1327261
- author
- Sjöberg, Maria and Striberger, Anna
- supervisor
- organization
- year
- 2006
- type
- H1 - Master's Degree (One Year)
- subject
- keywords
- Icke-latinsk skrift, Unicode, Romanisering, Flerspråkig biblioteksverksamhet, Standardisering, Documentation, information, library science, archivistics, Arkiv- och bibliotekskunskap, dokumentation
- language
- Swedish
- id
- 1327261
- date added to LUP
- 2006-06-19 00:00:00
- date last changed
- 2014-04-11 14:16:43
@misc{1327261,
abstract = {{The main purpose of this thesis has been to investigate librarians opinions about the need for and possibility to use non-roman script in library catalogues. We have also investigated the routines of handling materials in non-roman scripts in two Swedish libraries. The investigation was made in the light of the recent shift in character set in the Swedish National Library Catalogue Libris. This change will enable use of multiple writing systems in the future.
Our findings are that a multicultural society requires special consideration to the needs of citizens who speak other languages than the majority of the population. This becomes difficult when the languages spoken have a different writing system than the one used by the majority. The solution to transcribe or transliterate these languages has shown problematic especially in terms of information retrieval. Finding and hiring library educated staff with knowledge of different languages is also a problem, especially for libraries who cater to many diverse ethnic groups. Since handling non-roman script in computer systems has progressed in recent years it is now possible to use multiple writing systems in library catalogues. The most wide-spread character set for using multiple writing systems is unicode, which is why we have focused on this character set in our thesis. The use of unicode in Swedish library systems is progressing slowly however, and some libraries are developing local solutions to the problem with non-roman script in the catalogue. This despite the fact that a uniform standard is more efficient for sharing information in a computer based environment.
Our empirical study showed that there is a clearly stated need to adjust library services to fit the needs of users whose languages differ from the majority in Sweden, especially then these languages have non roman script.
Our method is based on empirical research through qualitative interviews as well as extensive literature studies to give our study a firm theoretical background.}},
author = {{Sjöberg, Maria and Striberger, Anna}},
language = {{swe}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Den flerspråkiga bibliotekskatalogen: Hantering av icke-latinsk skrift på bibliotek}},
year = {{2006}},
}