Others’ Books, Catalogues of our own: non-roman scripts in SBN

Abstract

The catalogue of the Italian National Library System (SBN) is a roman-script-only database. Local libraries, on the other hand, are facing requests from an increasing number of users from other countries, and are filling the gaps of the national system by developing isolated, non-collaborative ways to manage resources in non-roman scripts. Though a couple of Institutions have recently, but independently each other, developed projects to catalogue resources in native scripts, it is still impossible to predict when this feature will be finally implemented. In the next future, Italian cataloguers will therefore still rely on romanization only. After having briefly reviewed the romanization methods recommended by the Italian cataloging rules (REICAT), the article suggests to expand its repertoire by establishing a method for identifying the most suitable romanization standards.