Discusses problems of information distortion resulting from romanization (i.e., representation of nonroman scripts in Latin characters) and modifications of USMARC format to support nonroman scripts in library catalogs. Efforts to develop a universal character set and its potential effects on USMARC are considered. (45 references) (MES)

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…

Discusses some of the problems in creating bibliographic descriptions for materials published in languages which employ nonroman scripts, analyzes the impact of online catalog systems in overcoming some of these difficulties, and describes some of the computer hardware, particularly terminals, being developed to handle nonroman scripts. (JL)

Discusses bibliographic access to documents in nonroman scripts and the need for standards for the way different scripts are encoded for data processing. A microcomputer-based system that transliterates Cyrillic text to a romanized version and back to Cyrillic is proposed. (10 references) (MES)

Description of the conversion of San Diego State University Library's Asian collection from catalog cards to online catalog through OCLC discusses technical problems involved in creating databases with Chinese, Japanese, and Korean vernacular characters. Ambiguities created by romanization and decision to convert the collection only in romanized…