East Asian Languages in Orbis

Starting January 2006, Orbis, the online catalog of Yale University Library, displays Chinese, Japanese, and Korean scripts in the default "Brief View" and also has a limited function for searching CJK characters (see details here). But in the forseeable future, search with romanization is still the only reliable way to find East Asian language materials in Orbis; search with characters cannot substitute for search with romanization. Therefore, readers must understand the romanization system for the language they work with. Each language (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean) has their own romanization system:

• Chinese Romanization Guide;
• Japanese Romanization Guide;
• For Korean romanization, please consult a concise Korean Romanization Table from UCLA or a longer version from the Library of Congress.

Some tips for searching apply to all these three languages:

• Use an authoritative dictionary as reference for transliteration/ romanization;
• Pay special attention to the word division rules; word division can be tricky, both for non-native speakers and native speakers of Chinese, Japanese, or Korean;
• Be flexible--try a different transliteration or word division if no result is returned.

In addition, library users may need to refer to these two related guides:

• Searching and displaying East Asian scripts in Orbis, and
• East Asian languages computing in the library.