Special Committee to Propose a Chinese Place Names Policy for RDA
- Membership (Dec. 2011- )
- Sarah Elman, Chair
Head, Technical Services, C.V. Starr East Asian Library, Columbia University
Email: sse2109@columbia.edu - Robert R. Britt
Coordinator of East Asian Library Services, Gallagher Law Library, University of Washington
Email: rrbritt@u.washington.edu - Shi Deng
Head, CJK Acquisitions/Cataloging Unit, Metadata Services Department, UC San Diego Libraries
Email: sdeng@ucsd.edu - Vickie Doll
Chinese and Korean Studies Librarian, University of Kansas
Email: vdoll@ku.edu - Lauran Hartley
Tibetan Studies Librarian, C.V. Starr East Asian Library, Columbia University
Email: lh2112@columbia.edu - Zehua Sun
Principal Cataloger, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Email: lbsun@ust.hk - Background
- RDA revision proposal
- Committee Report
- ALA proposal 6JSC/ALA/19
Because of the size of China's territory, the existing cataloging practice for establishing place names (i.e., using the name of country "China" as qualifier unless two different places have identical names, in which case the name of province will be added as well) is considered by many, especially users and public services librarians, as inadequate. In order to address this issue during the transitional period from AACR2 to RDA, the Council on East Asian Libraries (CEAL) Committee on Technical Processing (CTP) conducted a survey in August 2011 among CEAL and PCC/CONSER members. The majority of those surveyed (ca. 93%) supported adding the name of province or its equivalent to the country name as a place name qualifier for Chinese locations.
Responding to the strong support of the community expressed in the survey, CTP submitted a proposal to the CEAL Executive Board to form the "Committee to Propose a Chinese Place Names Policy for RDA" and appoint Sarah S. Elman of Columbia University to organize and chair the committee. It was approved in early November 2011. A committee consisting of six CEAL members with various linguistic and library expertise was formed in early December 2011. In early April 2012, the proposal was finalized and forwarded to the ALA Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access (CC:DA) via the Chair of the Committee on Cataloging: Asian and African Materials (CC:AAM). See separate section below for the content of the proposal.