Diacritics

Diacritics appear in records for materials in many languages. As a general rule, searches should be entered without diacritics. Do not include a space for any diacritics that you omit except for hyphens. For example, to search for "La femme d'à côté," enter "femme da cote," omitting the initial article "La." Similarly, a search for "Böll, Heinrich" should be entered "Boll, Heinrich."

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Special characters

Most special characters in Western European languages should be searched using the closest Roman script letter. For example:

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Ligatures (combined letters or diphthongs)

Combined letters are searchable as two separate letters.

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Chinese

The catalog is currently moving from Wade-Giles to (External) Pinyin transliteration for Chinese records. For the time being, users may need to search both ways to find a full set of records.

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Japanese

Uses (External) Modified Hepburn System of romanization .

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Russian & other Cyrillic languages

Use (External) ALA romanization rules , not the International system. For example:

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Arabic

Arabic is transliterated according to (External) ALA romanization rules . When searching for materials in Arabic, it is not necessary to enter breathing marks, hyphens, or other diacritics. Spacing is important, however. Omit initial articles (al-) from title searches. If you omit hyphens, leave a space. For example, "al-buhturi" can also be searched as "al buhturi."

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Hebrew

Hebrew is transliterated according to (External) ALA romanization rules and approximates modern Israeli pronunciation. Drop the initial definite article (ha-) when searching titles in Hebrew transliteration. If you omit hyphens, leave a space. For example, "ve-eleh" can also be searched as "ve eleh."

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