Association for Asian Studies
Committee on Research Materials on Southeast Asia (CORMOSEA)
Subcommittee on Technical Processes 1999 Annual Meeting Minutes
Thursday, March 11, 1999, 2 4 p.m.
Boston Marriott Copley Place Hotel, Rhode Island Room


Present: Lygia Ballantyne (Library of Congress), Edita R. Baradi (Guest, Yale), Rohayati Paseng Barnard (Cornell), Lan Hiang Char (Hawaii), Jeffrey L. Ferrier (Ohio), Fe Susan T. Go (Michigan), Alan Grosenheider (Washington), Lian Tie Kho (Yale), Angela Kinney (Library of Congress), Raymond Lum (Harvard), Sujira Meesanga (Michigan), Chalermsee Olson (Northern Illinois), Larwan Orser (Guest, University of Florida), Robin Paynter (Oregon), Chan T. Phan (Harvard), Fred Protopappas (Library of Congress), Richard Richie (Yale), Virginia Jing yi Shih (Chair and Recorder, Berkeley), and May Kyi Win (Northern Illinois).

I. Approval of Minutes

The minutes of the 1998 annual meeting of CORMOSEA Subcommittee on Technical Processes were approved.

II. Remarks on Thai Word Division and Transliteration

Sujira Meesanga and Chalermsee Olson led the discussion on Thai word division and transliteration based on Olson's previous Thai cataloging comments as attached below. "I" refers to C. Olson.

A) LC/ALA Romanization Table: Is it adequate? Should it be revised? If it is good enough, why is it so hard for people especially users to handle this? I think another thing to make it clear is the difference between transliteration and romanization is. What Professor John Hartmann has done is more like transliteration--each character represents each consonant and vowel. Romanization tends to go with pronunciation, which is what we are doing in cataloging.

B) Word Division: Thai language doesn't have word division. What we are doing now in cataloging is following the way English cataloging does. How do catalogers try to do their work so users can retrieve those records efficiently? I try to trace those titles differently by using tag 246. For example:

245 10 Nangsu rian prawattisat Thai 246 3 Nangsurian prawattisat Thai

The other problem that we have is that sometimes Thai words can be pronounced in different ways--official and non-official that a lot of Thai use. For example, the words: karani or korani, prawattisat or prawatsat, etc. If these words show up in the first five words of the title, I will trace them differently too. All of these will help in accessing. Back to word division rules, if we stick to the LC/ALA rules closely, we will be fine.

C) Name Authority: We talked about the big program, which will happen, in the next ALA annual meeting in DC this summer. They look into adding vernacular language of names in the authority records. This is just the beginning. If this happens, it will take years before they get to Thai and help to relieve the problems. Right now, I think personal names are the big problems which I mentioned in my paper (Please see "Cataloging Southeast Asian Language Materials: The Case of the Thai Language" in CATALOGING & CLASSIFICATION QUARTERLY, v. 22 (2), 1996).

The other problem that I see and I don't think we can change is the capability of OCLC to search any bibliographic records written by the same person no matter what his name was or is now. OCLC has cross-reference of names for that person in the name authority file. I will make up examples:

Authority record of a Buddhist monk:

100 00 Phra Thepwethi #q (Chu) 400 00 Phra Ratchaworamuni #q (Chu)

This monk's title was Ratchaworamuni one time. He wrote ten books under that title. Later he was promoted to the rank where he is now. He has written two books under this new rank. If you search OCLC to find books under his new rank, you will find only two new books. I think the system should give us 2+10. Your local systems like NOTIS, DRA, etc. can do this. The system we have now in Northern Illinois can do it but we have to merge those two ranks under one. This will pull all bibliographic records under both titles. It would be nice if we can have vernacular languages in both bibliographic and authority records in the accessible fields.

III. Reports from the Library of Congress

A) Annual Activities/Projects of Southeast/South Asia Team

Angela Kinney distributed an informative annual report on LC Southeast/South Asia Team for FY 98 to all participants. She reported briefly on LC staffing changes, professional activities that included the Asian Materials Cataloging Seminar held at LC, Conferences on Vietnamese cataloging and Conferences on Southeast Asia conducted or attended by LC staff. Special projects included printed card project and Vietnamese project.

B) Fred Protopappas gave a brief update on the reorganization of Acquisitions Directorate and effect on African/Asian Acquisitions & Overseas Operations Division.

C) Implementation of LC Integrated Library System

Angela Kinney distributed an informative handout on LC Integrated Library System Implementation called Voyager. She gave a general overview about Voyager's integrated functionality and LC strategic implementation planning and training, its benefits to LC and its users, its program management role, database structure of bibliographic holdings, and its biggest changes in the coming year.

D) Orientation to Southeast Asia Cataloging at LC-New Delhi Field Office

Lygia Ballantyne gave a short briefing on Southeast Asia cataloging staffing, cataloging activities, cataloging statistics for Burmese, Khmer, Lao, and Thai monographs and serials as well as Khmer, Lao, and Thai backlog at LC-New Delhi Office. A Southeast Asia microfilm title listing was circulated.

IV. Old Business

A) Update on CORMOSEA Subject Cataloging Proposal to LC African/Asian Acquisitions & Overseas Operations Division

In 1998, CORMOSEA submitted a subject cataloging proposal to LC African/Asian Acquisitions & Overseas Operations Division to consider having materials in history and literature subject cataloged by LC-Jakarta field office. The rationale for this process was to provide Cooperative Acquisitions Program members quicker access to bibliographic records for those materials that they acquired from LC. Unfortunately, the proposal was dropped due to its high cost for staff training.

B) National Cooperative Southeast Asia Cataloging Consortium Proposal Follow-up

Virginia Shih followed up the discussion on the national cooperative Southeast Asia cataloging consortium proposal. The majority of CORMOSEA members felt no need of formalizing any cooperative Southeast Asia cataloging consortium at this point and time due to the difficulties of getting the administrative support from their respective institutions or lack of time beyond their regular work schedule. In principle, CORMOSEA members are willing to help one another with Southeast Asia cataloging issues on a small scale upon request.