Discusses the adoption of the pinyin Romanization standard over Wade-Giles and considers the impact on retrieval in online library catalogs. Describes an investigation that tested three factors that could influence retrieval efficiency: the number of usable syllables, the average number of letters per syllable, and users' familiarity with the…

Discusses the romanization of Chinese characters in U.S. library bibliographic records; considers the advantages and disadvantages of changing from Wade-Giles romanization to pinyin; describes word division problems; proposes an alternative that uses a computer program; and considers the future possibilities of a multiscript, general purpose…

Considers whether or not library materials in East Asian languages should be integrated into the general collection. Romanized access through a Latin-script library catalog and nonromanized access through a browsing collection are considered. After exploring the difficulties in romanizing Chinese and Japanese scripts, a separate collection is…