Library catalogues differ in how they list and find translated books
Translations in library catalogues: how to find them?
Digital Libraries
Summary
Finding books that are translations can be tricky because library catalogues don’t use all the available fields to describe translations. The paper explains how cataloguers can use different data elements to record details like the original language, translator, and original title. It compares how five national libraries handle these data and how that affects finding translated works. This shows that searching for translations in library catalogues is not straightforward and varies by country.
What this means in practice
- •For library software developers: Improve catalog search features by integrating more MARC21 fields relevant to translations for better user discovery of translated editions.
- •For digital librarians: Develop cataloguing guidelines that consistently use translation-related MARC21 data elements to help users identify translated works more easily across national catalogues.
Authors
Péter Király
Abstract
In library catalogues based on MARC21 bibliographic metadata schema there are about a dozen data elements that catalogers can utilize to record information about the different aspects of translations: whether or not the edition is a translation, source and target language, title of the original work, translator and other contributors, publication data of the original work, literary genre. Libraries however rarely explore the full arsenal, thus to find translation is not a trivial task. The paper describes these important MARC21 data elements, and shows a use case of finding translations in five catalogues (of the Norwegian, Croatian, Polish, Belgian and Dutch national libraries) explaining the differences among the practices, and the results.