Descriptive Cataloging Issues for Non-Western Corpora: A Case Study of Late Imperial Chinese Books

Full-text digital libraries (DL) like the HathiTrust open new analytic opportunities for digital humanists and those studying language-specific corpora such as late imperial Chinese books. These analyses rely on DL metadata records to contextualize and validate findings. However, historic Anglo-Amer...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inCataloging & classification quarterly Vol. 61; no. 1; pp. 1 - 19
Main Authors Shang, Wenyi, Jett, Jacob, Underwood, Ted, Stephen Downie, J.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York Routledge 02.01.2023
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
Bibliographic metadata
book history
Case studies
cataloging for digital resources
Digital libraries
HathiTrust digital library
internationalization of cataloging
late imperial China
Library cataloging
MARC
MARC records
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:Full-text digital libraries (DL) like the HathiTrust open new analytic opportunities for digital humanists and those studying language-specific corpora such as late imperial Chinese books. These analyses rely on DL metadata records to contextualize and validate findings. However, historic Anglo-American cataloging practices introduce difficulties. Our comparative case study of HathiTrust MARC records for Chinese (1,534), English (25,866), and German (7,872) books (the 1500s-1700s) reveals significant problems: data spread across fields; essential data lacunae; lack of normalization; and information transcribed from sources without translation nor explanation. Cataloging practices need updating to support scholars working with Chinese and other Asian materials.
ISSN:0163-9374
1544-4554
DOI:10.1080/01639374.2022.2148800