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Cataloging and Classification of Pacific and Asian

Language Materials at the National Library of Australia
a
Peter Haddad
a
Technical Services Branch , National Library of Australia , Canberra, ACT, 2600, Australia E-
mail:
Published online: 23 Oct 2009.

To cite this article: Peter Haddad (2003) Cataloging and Classification of Pacific and Asian Language Materials at the National
Library of Australia, Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, 35:3-4, 483-489, DOI: 10.1300/J104v35n03_09

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J104v35n03_09

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 Cataloging and Classification
of Pacific and Asian Language Materials
at the National Library of Australia
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Peter Haddad

SUMMARY. From its inception early in the twentieth century, the Na-
tional Library of Australia has included in its collections materials in the
languages of the Pacific region. Following the Second World War, the
Library began to collect materials in the languages of East and Southeast
Asia. This collection policy presented the Library with a number of
choices in the cataloging, classification, and organising of its collections.
Early difficulties in controlling materials, many in non-roman scripts,
showed the need to be consistent in bibliographic standards and practices.
A concern for the needs of specialist readers led the National Library to
provide innovative solutions for accessing script materials in the automated
environment. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document
Delivery Service: 1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address: <getinfo@haworthpressinc.com>
Website: <http://www.HaworthPress.com> © 2003 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All
rights reserved.]

KEYWORDS. Asia, bibliographic organization, cataloging standards,

Pacific, transliteration

Peter Haddad, BA, Dip. Lib., is Director, Technical Services Branch, National Li-
brary of Australia, Canberra, ACT 2600, Australia (E-mail: phaddad@nla.gov.au).
[Haworth co-indexing entry note]: “Cataloging and Classification of Pacific and Asian Language Mate-
rials at the National Library of Australia.” Haddad, Peter. Co-published simultaneously in Cataloging & Clas-
sification Quarterly (The Haworth Information Press, an imprint of The Haworth Press, Inc.) Vol. 35, No. 3/4,
2003, pp. 483-489; and: Historical Aspects of Cataloging and Classification (ed: Martin D. Joachim) The
Haworth Information Press, an imprint of The Haworth Press, Inc., 2003, pp. 483-489. Single or multiple cop-
ies of this article are available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service [1-800-HAWORTH,
9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. (EST). E-mail address: getinfo@haworthpressinc.com].

 2003 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. 483

 484 HISTORICAL ASPECTS OF CATALOGING AND CLASSIFICATION

INTRODUCTION

The primary collecting responsibility of the National Library of Australia is

Australian materials in keeping with its role of ensuring that a comprehensive
record of Australian history and creative endeavour is collected and preserved
for the nation. The Library has built a comprehensive collection of Australian
materials deposited under the terms of the Copyright Act 1912 and the Copy-
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right Act 1968. However, it is not possible for even the most narrowly focused
national collection to remain untouched or unaffected by the formative influ-
ences shaping the nation, the cultural diversity of its society and the geograph-
ical location of the country. From the outset, the National Library’s collections
contained both Australian material and the records of British and European
civilisation on which the institutions and customs of the Australia of one hun-
dred years ago was so heavily based.

PACIFIC COLLECTIONS

To build a national collection worthy of the name, the fledgling National

Library of Australia relied on the acquisition of large formed collections
amassed by bibliophiles and scholars. Two of the National Library of Austra-
lia’s formative collections of Australiana also included books dealing with
New Zealand and the Pacific.
The Petherick Collection, which the National Library acquired in 1909,
contained around 1,000 books on New Zealand and Polynesia, including
works on the languages and customs of indigenous peoples. Sir John Fergu-
son’s large collection came to the Library progressively between 1937 and
1970 and was particularly rich in religious material from the islands of the Pa-
cific, including many early publications in the languages of the region. The
oldest item in the collection in a Pacific language is the 1820 translation by
John Davies of the Gospel according to St Matthew in Tahitian: Te Evanelia
Mataio no Iesu Christ to tatou fatu. A third collection, acquired from Sir Rex
Nan Kivell, also added a number of items in Pacific languages and Maori ma-
terials from New Zealand.
Geographical proximity to the Pacific and its strategic and economic impor-
tance to Australia have ensured that the National Library has continued to give
a high priority to collecting material from Oceania. The Library’s collections
of Papua New Guinean materials are also strong. Australia administered Papua
New Guinea until it became an independent nation in 1975, and throughout the
 Special Formats or Topics 485

colonial period its publications were subject to legal deposit with the National
Library of Australia.

ASIAN COLLECTIONS

Prior to the Second World War, the National Library collected little from
Asia. Its focus was on Australiana and the literature of Europe. During the war,
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the rapid Japanese advance through Southeast Asia to the borders of Australia
itself and the resulting need for information and intelligence revealed the pau-
city of Australian library holdings on Asia. After the war, with the former colo-
nial powers withdrawing from the region, Asia assumed a new importance and
prominence in Australian consciousness. Harold White, the National Librarian
at the time, was quick to sense this and to realise the role the National Library
could play in building up its Asian collections. The Chinese, Japanese, Ko-
rean, and Thai collections built up during the 1950s became the core languages
of the Library’s Orientalia Section, established in 1962. They have since
grown rapidly with the Chinese and Japanese collections becoming the largest
in Australia while the Korean collection is one of the few Korean collections in
the region. Reporting to the Library’s Bibliographical Services Section, the
Orientalia Section functioned as a library within a library, with its own acquisi-
tions procedures, card catalogues, and reading room.
Collecting from Asia was also expanded during these years to encompass
Indonesia, the former Dutch East Indies. In 1972 the National Library estab-
lished an acquisitions office in Jakarta, a move that was instrumental in allow-
ing the Library to build an outstanding Indonesian collection. During the
1970s collecting from a number of other countries of Southeast Asia was ex-
panded. Publications from Burma, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam were ac-
quired for the collections and continue to be collected today.
As in the National Library’s earliest years, formed collections were used as
a way to add depth and richness to the Library’s holdings and to acquire older
historical publications in addition to the more recent publications representing
the bulk of the Asian collection material. In the field of Asian studies, the Li-
brary was fortunate to secure a number of significant personal collections be-
longing to scholars and academics. Among these were the acquisitions of the
collection of Walter Percival Yetts, one time Professor of Chinese Art and Ar-
chaeology at the University of London, Harold Williams (Japan), Professor
Gordon Hannington Luce (Burma), Professor George Coedes (Indo-China),
Professor Henry Otley-Beyer (Philippines), Jose Maria Braga (Macau and
Hong Kong), and Mrs. Jessie McLaren (Korea). The Library also purchased
the Chinese language holdings of the London Missionary Society, which in-
cluded a number of scarce nineteenth century Chinese imprints.
 486 HISTORICAL ASPECTS OF CATALOGING AND CLASSIFICATION

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL CONTROL

The acquisition of materials from Asia and the Pacific presented the Na-
tional Library with a number of decisions to be made in the cataloguing, clas-
sification, and organising of the collections. Materials in Maori and the
Polynesian and Melanesian languages of the Pacific presented fewer prob-
lems as they used the Roman alphabet and could be readily incorporated into
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the Library’s card catalogues. Their cataloguing, requiring language exper-

tise in numerous Pacific languages, was more difficult, and for many years
the cataloguing was basic, consisting of transcription data from the publica-
tion, without subject headings, and a Dewey Decimal Classification number. It
was only many years after the acquisition of these materials that a cataloguer
with the required language expertise and contacts with academics working in
the field of Pacific linguistics completed the task by entering full cataloguing
data into the on-line catalogue that had succeeded the card catalogue. Wher-
ever subject headings were found to be lacking for the material in hand, pro-
posals for new Library of Congress subject headings were submitted.
In a similar way, materials from East and Southeast Asia using the roman
script were relatively easily accommodated in the Library’s general collec-
tions. Materials from Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei required the services of
specialist cataloguers but were catalogued using the same standards used for
the general collection of the Library: Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, Li-
brary of Congress Subject Headings, and Dewey Decimal Classification. Au-
thority headings, and to a large degree the subject descriptors required by the
materials, could be handled perfectly well using the existing standards. Be-
cause of the depth of its collections from Southeast Asia, the National Library
expanded the geographic area codes for Indonesia, Malaysia, and Papua New
Guinea in the early 1980s to be able to code subjects at the provincial level as
well as at the national level. Vietnamese language materials presented some
problems with the early generation of automated systems. Although using the
roman script, the diacritics used, and particularly the practice of using more
than one diacritic with a letter, could not always be accurately represented in
the output from the systems.

VERNACULAR SCRIPTS

Materials in non-roman scripts, however, presented the National Library

with a series of challenges as records for these materials could not readily be
integrated into card catalogues using the roman script, nor could the materials
be easily interfiled with most of the other resources of the Library. The stan-
 Special Formats or Topics 487

dards for descriptive and subject cataloguing remained the same (AACR and
LCSH); specialised classification schemes were applied to these materials,
such as the Harvard-Yenching classification for Chinese, Japanese, and Ko-
rean materials. While the card catalogues in the Orientalia Section contained
cards in the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean scripts, romanized headings were
constructed and filed in the catalogues. The transliteration schemes used
were Wade Giles for Chinese, the modified Hepburn system for Japanese and
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the McCune-Reischauer system for Korean. American Library Association

(ALA) transliteration tables were also used for Burmese, Khmer, Lao, Thai
and Tibetan. During the 1980s the Library’s Asian collections moved from
bibliographic control via card catalogues to control using automated systems.
From 1985 romanized records for Asian script materials were made available
on automated systems and began to appear in the Library’s microfiche cata-
logue and its online network. Today they continue to appear in the Library’s
online catalogue as part of the highly integrated approach that has always been
taken towards the cataloguing of its collections.

AUTOMATION AND VERNACULAR SCRIPTS

The Library has always regarded the use of romanization as a necessary

mechanism for constructing card catalogues and later in building online cata-
logues, but it has never been seen as an ideal solution. Transliteration is cum-
bersome and time consuming for the cataloguing staff and is difficult and in
some cases impenetrable to the native speaker.
During the 1980s the National Library followed overseas developments in
the automation of vernacular scripts with great interest. In 1992 a study revealed
that 78 out of 180 Australian libraries surveyed held materials in vernacular
scripts, the largest collections being those in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. An
automated system for resources in these languages was envisaged not only to
control the National Library’s own collections but also with the potential to
serve as a national network for all Australian libraries wishing to use it.

THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL CJK SYSTEM

In 1995 the Library began planning for a Chinese Japanese Korean System
based on the INNOPAC software and which would allow the input and display
of vernacular script characters. The National CJK system that was launched in
1996 was a co-operative project involving seven Australian university librar-
ies and the National Library to build a union catalogue of CJK materials and to
 488 HISTORICAL ASPECTS OF CATALOGING AND CLASSIFICATION

provide a ready source of copy cataloguing. The aims of the system were to al-
low libraries to create catalogue and authority data for the CJK materials they
held, to include CJK characters in the data, and to share the data. Library users
and staff would be able to search for CJK materials using vernacular script in
the search terms, and search results would contain vernacular script. The resul-
tant database would provide a union catalogue of Chinese, Japanese, and Ko-
rean materials held in Australia. The Australian National CJK system has been
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very successful in achieving these aims. Use of the CJK system has provided
the National Library with the means to allow both cataloguing staff and read-
ers to work in the relevant language and to reduce reliance on romanization.
One of the key features of the system was the provision of parallel databases
for Chinese records, one containing Chinese records using the Wade-Giles
system and one using pinyin. The parallel databases reflected the romanization
situation in Australia at the time. Older libraries generally used the scholarly
and widespread Wade-Giles scheme, while newer libraries had generally
adopted the pinyin system favoured by the Chinese government. However,
the time had arrived for many libraries to move from Wade-Giles to pinyin.
For Australian libraries considering the change, the Australian National CJK
System project staff developed a migration process using a computer pro-
gram devised in-house and based on the work of Karl Lo at the University of
California, San Diego. This mechanised conversion process was later adopted
by the Library of Congress in making a similar change. The CJK system cur-
rently operates with twenty-three libraries around Australia and no longer
maintains its parallel databases.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

Bibliographic control of Asian and Pacific language materials within the

National Library of Australia has been greatly aided from the beginning by the
high degree of adherence to internationally recognised cataloguing and classi-
fication standards. While the Library has developed and expanded means of
access to its collections, it has preferred to seek these enhancements through
the existing bibliographical infrastructure and within the standards frame-
work. This has enabled the widest possible opportunity to share data and has
made it possible for the Library to undertake retrospective conversion of its
data relatively easily. Today, the Library’s catalogue is available via the
Internet, and the Library’s website at http://www.nla.gov.au contains substan-
tial information about the Library’s language collections.
Although Canberra is the capital city of Australia, it has a relatively small
population, and it is geographically distant from the major centres of the popu-
 Special Formats or Topics 489

lation. One of the National Library’s objectives is to take advantage of the new
technologies to open up its collections to people living elsewhere in Australia
and, indeed, the world. With the widespread introduction of personal comput-
ers and their ability to display fonts in a wide range of scripts, library user ex-
pectations are increasing. The ability of the personal computer to display a
range of fonts in a range of non-roman scripts creates the expectation that li-
brary systems will be similarly sophisticated and efficient. The National Li-
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brary of Australia’s experience with the bibliographical control of its Chinese,

Japanese and Korean materials through the CJK system has been a positive
one. The Library’s remaining large collections in script languages are Thai,
Lao, Burmese, and Khmer. It is part of a wider vision of the Library to be able
to allow users direct access to these materials, and to integrate the cataloguing
records in these vernacular scripts into the national bibliographic database.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Biskup, Peter; and Henty, Margaret. Library for the Nation. Canberra: Australian Aca-
demic & Research Libraries, National Library of Australia, 1991.
Burmester, C. A. National Library of Australia: Guide to the Collections. Canberra:
National Library of Australia, 1974-1982.
Cochrane, Peter, ed. Remarkable Occurrences: The National Library of Australia’s
First 100 years 1901-2001. Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2001.
Groom, Linda. “Converting Wade-Giles Cataloguing to Pinyin: The Development and
Implementation of a Conversion Program for the Australian National CJK Ser-
vice.” Library Resources and Technical Services, 41, no. 3 (1997): 254-263.
Kenny, Janice. National Library of Australia: History and Collections. Canberra: Na-
tional Library of Australia, 1984.