Searching and Displaying East Asian Scripts in Orbis

Yale's online library catalog – Orbis – received a major upgrade during the 2005-06 winter recess. This new version includes some significant improvements in retrieval and display of East Asian language materials (see technical requirements). While these improvements represent a major step forward, there are substantial problems that limit the usefulness of the new version. This document will describe relevant new developments, suggest search strategies, and discuss known problems and workarounds.

Overview

New Features in Orbis

• Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (CJK) characters immediately display in default "Brief View";
• Introduction of a limited function for searching CJK characters (search issues noted below);
• Fewer problems with CJK text display in the records.

General Recommendations for Searching

• Searching by romanization is still the only reliable way to find CJK materials in Orbis. Everyone searching for East Asian materials still needs to be familiar with the CJK romanization rules.
• Searching by CJK characters is recommended only as
• a good starting point for users who are unfamiliar with romanization;
• (sometimes) a more efficient way for finding known titles than searching with romanization.

Searching by CJK Characters: Major Problems and Workarounds

• Inconsistent spacing in Orbis records (a space is used between characters in many records, but not in others) affects the ''Simple Search''.
  • Workaround: use ''Advanced Search'' instead.
• Existence of variant characters (a user types in one form of the character but the record has another form)
  • Workaround: use romanization to search instead.

Additional problems and workarounds are listed below.

The ability to view the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean fields in the "Brief View" is a major improvement in the new version of Orbis. However, the retrieval of CJK records is affected in a major way by the issues described here. Therefore, until the Orbis system vendor implements solutions to these problems, searches by CJK characters cannot substitute for searches by romanization . The new character search capability can be used, however, when looking for a known title or known author. In addition, at times it is more efficient to search with CJK characters, given that the reader knows the exact characters used in the Orbis record. Also, those who are not familiar with CJK Romanization rules can start with searching CJK characters and then conduct additional searches in the romanized form identified in the initial search results.

Problems and Workarounds

• Issues related to searching CJK scripts in the New Orbis (basic technical requirement: installing Unicode fonts)
• Issues related to displaying CJK scripts in the New Orbis (basic technical requirement: configuring Microsoft IME or Mac input menu)

Questions? Contact Us

For further questions regarding searching for CJK materials in Orbis, please contact the East Asia Library Staff (432-1794; east.asia.library@yale.edu)