Sponsored by Core's Committee on Cataloging: African and Asian Materials (CC:AAM) and the ALA-LC Romanization Table Review Board on August 23, 2023
Presenters: Beacher Wiggins, Charles Riley, Erin Freas-Smith, Neil Patel, Jessalyn Zoom
Moderator: Boutsaba Janetvilay
Romanization Tables are jointly maintained by the American Library Association and the Library of Congress. The Review Board, formed in May 2021, is charged with appointing Review Subcommittees to conduct the review and approval of new and updated romanization proposals. In spring 2023, the ALA-LC Romanization Table Review Board approved the newly created romanization table for ADLaM, a script developed in the late 1980s for a group of Fulani languages spoken chiefly in West Africa. The table was independently created by Africana cataloger Charles Riley of Yale University over several years in response to the marked increase in publications in ADLaM script. The program will highlight the development of the ADLaM Romanization table with active engagement of the script user community. The new table covers several areas of development including: the display of Unicode code points to clarify the identification of the characters in the table, the test of character input in the Bibframe Editor MARVA, and the creation and integration of a bi-directional transliteration tool into the ScriptShifter, an application to facilitate input of non-Latin scripts. This process underscores the critical role played by technology to streamline the workflow of romanization and improve bibliographic accuracy and discoverability of non-Latin script material. The presentation will conclude with a future look at the potential of technological integration and the role of the Review Board.
Watch the recording