[Cohsl-list] exchange with Barbara Tillett

Personal notes at the end of Barbara and Deb's messages were deleted (indicated by ". . .") -----Original Message----- From: Barbara B Tillett [mailto:btil@loc.gov] Sent: Friday, April 02, 2010 1:57 PM To: Stewart, Deb; Dan Hazen; Rhea Lesage; Alison Scott Cc: Beacher J E Wiggins; Lucas Graves; Robert Miller Hiatt; Thompson A Yee; John F. Myers Subject: RE: FW: FW: Greek transliteration Dear Deb and Rhea - Thank you so much for writing with your constructive suggestions (below) on how to move this forward. I will be meeting with our LC experts I hope next week to discuss the ALA report, which I just received ( and I will forward to you all in a separate email next). We will be back in touch as soon as possible with you and ALA CC:DA, certainly before the end of April, and I hope we can work out good solutions together over the next few weeks. I would like to suggest that we really try to sort this out by email in the coming weeks, but should there be any other issues, that we use the ALA CC:DA meeting as the forum for discussion, as this is an ALA/LC Romanization table. Although I'd love to go again to Dumbarton Oaks (and will try to find an opportunity this spring), I really want this resolved before June with just final touches if needed at ALA, so thank you for the very kind offer, but hopefully we won't need an additional, separate meeting. More soon! - Barbara . . . Dr. Barbara B. Tillett, Ph.D. Chief, Policy and Standards Division Library of Congress 101 Independence Ave., S.E. Washington, D.C. 20540-4260 U.S.A. tel.: +1 (202) 707-4714 fax: +1 (202) 707-6629 email: btil(a)loc.gov Dear colleagues, I am also pleased that the comment period has been extended and agree with Deb that it is time to move forward to resolution of the issues. Deb and I have had numerous conversations and I support her thorough analysis of the proposals put forth from Princeton. I, too, object to what we believe is the CC:DA’s recommendation, which is to remove all the rough breathing from all post-1453 records, for all the reasons that she outlines below. I would like to add that Harvard’s Director of the Modern Greek Studies Program is opposed to this recommendation and he, too, pointed out that 1453 is significant for political, not philological reasons. Essentially, the recommendation instructs us to cast aside more than 550 years of the Greek language to incorporate an orthographic change that took place 28 years ago. If the impetus to implement this change is to respect the orthographic changes that took place in 1982, and if a change MUST take place, then 1982 should be the cut-off date. This would require a national retrospective conversion project and since the community has indicated that there is no money for this kind of project, this supports the argument for the third option, which is: maintain the status quo. I hope that the CC:DA will have the opportunity to look at the rest of the community’s feedback so they can fully understand the implications of any change to the table. I will give more thought to this whole issue and will get back to Barbara and Bob with more feedback in the coming weeks. Great thanks go to Dumbarton Oaks for offering to host a meeting in late June! Sincerely, Rhea Lesage From: Stewart, Deb [mailto:BrownD@DOAKS.org] Sent: Thursday, April 01, 2010 12:23 PM To: Barbara B Tillett; Lesage, Rhea; Robert Miller Hiatt Cc: Hazen, Dan; Scott, Alison; Thompson A Yee; John F. Myers Subject: RE: FW: FW: Greek transliteration Dear colleagues, I am delighted to hear that the comment period has been extended, pending further discussion and proposals, which was our hope with the petition. To move forward to resolution of the issues, I would like to share the following thoughts: Meeting in June: Our Director, Jan Ziolkowski, has agreed to let me arrange meeting space at Dumbarton Oaks, if that is what is preferred. The advantages (besides the beautiful setting) are that the meeting room is free and can seat as many as 50 people (although I think a smaller number is preferable for discussion) and that we avoid monopolizing the CC:DA committee meeting and are less constrained by time. The disadvantages are that we would most likely be meeting after the CC:DA meeting, which delays their vote, and that participants in the discussion may need to extend their trip to DC. I leave that to the judgment of John Myers and others, but please just let me know by May 1 so that I have time to make the necessary arrangements (I will be out of the office May 19-middle of June). Summary of some of the proposals (in addition to the changes proposed in December), which Jeff Luttrell and our colleagues at Princeton suggested to CoHSL (Jeff’s text is italicized below to distinguish it from my comments): 1) Keep the status quo but remove the rough breathing from all post-1453 Modern Greek records. Our catalogers agreed that a machine conversion of our catalog would be possible—in which bibliographic records in Modern Greek would have the letter “h” stripped from words where it preceded a vowel—and that the new practice would be relatively simple to implement and result in better searching for users, many of whom are unfamiliar with the whole issue of rough breathing signs. However, such an approach would no longer reflect the fact that the rough breathing does appear in polytonic texts, which are still being published in spite of the official adoption of monotonic orthography in 1982. What Rhea and I have heard from the grapevine is that this is the option preferred by the CC:DA task-force. I see a few advantages: ● Researchers will be able to search most publications (except critical editions for classical and Byzantine texts) without worrying about the rough breathing. ● Catalogers will not need to concern themselves with distinguishing between polytonic and monotonic, rough breathing vs. no rough breathing, unless they are searching classical or Byzantine Greek. ● This should eliminate the concern over serial records for publications that started with polytonic orthography and switched to monotonic at some point during the history of the publication. My objections to this proposal: ● We assume that machine conversions will isolate MARC records with language code gre and strip the h from select fields, and we are concerned about the accuracy of such machine conversions (as well as the human and financial resources to implement such conversions). Consider, for example, the contents of this 245 field: “Glōssa, koinōnia, historia : ta Valkania : praktika diethnous synedriou, Thessalonikē, 11-12 Noemvriou 2001 / epistēmonikē epimeleia, A.-Ph. Christidēs me synergasia me tis M. Arapopoulou & M. Chritē ; eisagōgē, G. Drettas = Language, society, history : the Balkans : proceedings of an international conference, Thessaloniki, 11-12 November 2001 / editor, A.-F. Christidis in collaboration with M. Arapopoulou & M. Chriti ; introduction, G. Drettas.” ● Stripping the “h” will necessitate changing the non-filing indicators in the 245 field for most records, correct? Harvard libraries encountered this problem with the Greek feminine article a few years ago, so we can share information about how it was resolved if you’d like. ● The 1453 date is significant for political, not philological reasons: Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, but the Byzantine Greek language did not abruptly change to “modern Greek” at this time. ● Similarly, one cannot mark a change in the language’s orthography at 1453. The type used in early Greek printing was very closely modeled on Byzantine script (ligatures, variant letter forms, diacritics, and all!). Greek typography did not simplify until the middle of the 18th century – there was some griping about complex Greek fonts in the 17th century, but upright fonts with few ligatures and the elimination of most variant letter forms did not become standard until the late 18thc. If you look at Greek publications throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, you will see that polytonic (with rough breathing!) was common up until 1982. After 1982, well, that becomes more complicated, as we all know. In order to catalog accurately all Greek printed books, the polytonic orthography must be respected in some way. 2) Keep the status quo but, instead of removing the rough breathing from post-1453 Modern Greek records, replace it with a new diacritic. In other words, for polytonic works in Modern Greek, the appearance of the rough breathing would be indicated in transliteration by a diacritic, not a character, which would insure the same search results as those from monotonic texts. This approach was also considered simple to implement. However, it was understood that (in addition to a perhaps problematic innovation) the retrospective replacement of the transliterated “h” with this diacritic would result, at least initially, in a subset of monotonic texts that now appear as polytonic. This option has several advantages over option #1: ● It respects the continuation of the polytonic orthography post-1453 and even post-1982. ● It is as easy on the user as option #1; for example, searching “istoria” will find both the polytonic and monotonic Greek. ● If the diacritic is place-holding, then the non-filing indicators in the 245 field will not need to be adjusted. My concerns: ● Again, retrospective conversion may be problematic and perhaps more complex, since, ideally, the conversion will strip the diacritic from records with monotonic Greek. ● Catalogers will need to learn to distinguish between acute accents and the rough breathing mark. ● Users will still need to learn the transliteration standards. In particular, if the “h” for rough breathing is preserved for pre-1453 Greek, then classical and Byzantine studies users will need to know both ways in which the rough breathing is represented. 3) Keep the status quo with no exceptions. The continuity of previous Greek cataloging means something, as do the expectations that it has created. Nevertheless, we understand that this status quo is becoming increasingly untenable with a new generation of users. The greatest disadvantages of the status quo are that it does not reflect monotonic orthography (which is becoming increasingly common for new Greek publications) and that it does not keep up with the standards that are used in the rest of the international community (although I know some major research centers like the University of Vienna use the “h” for rough breathing). This we all agree is problematic. The advantages, at this point in time, are many: We have all given thought to the many problems of a conversion project, both for bibliographic and authority records: funding, scope, the necessity of human resources, etc. and how difficult the transition period will be for our researchers and for librarians. Most of our US-based researchers (all fields of study) are accustomed to the old standard and have used/still use it in bibliographies, syllabi, etc. that are shared with students and researchers. Some things we can do to improve on the status quo: ● We can supply a finite list of terms where polytonic Greek includes a rough breathing with the transliteration standards. ● We hope to see more use of the vernacular (Unicode) with parallel fields including the Romanization (see the New Griffon 9 (2007), published by the Gennadeion Library in Athens and including the proceedings of a 2006 meeting of American, British, and Greek librarians who work with modern Greek) Effect on classical and Byzantine studies scholars: I would also like to clarify that the classics, patristics, Biblical Greek, and Byzantine studies communities do have a stake in these discussions. The pre-1453 standard preserves the rough breathing and other points of contention for critical editions of ancient Greek texts (most US libraries purchase only those editions published in US and Western Europe), which are fundamental to the disciplines. But graduate- and professional-level research in classical and Byzantine studies does rely on publications that are affected by post-1453 standards. Greek scholarship in the fields of Greek epigraphy, Byzantine history, Byzantine language and literature (including Greek-published critical editions of Byzantine literature, which are sometimes the authoritative edition preferred by scholars), art history of all eras, and archaeology has been relevant to advanced research in these fields since the 19th century. For example, prehistoric/classical/post-classical archaeologists based in the US cannot avoid modern Greek publications, because most of the excavations and research done on larger and smaller sites in Greece are done by the Greek archaeological service, the Greek archaeological society, and other archaeologists in Greece, including the Athenian acropolis, Eleusis, Epidauros, Dodona, Messene, etc. despite some publications on this sites being available in other languages. While discussing the proposed changes with classical and Byzantine researchers, I have found that a number of them are confused already, because they have assumed that the decision is based on the subject content, not the publication information. Indeed, these classical and Byzantine studies scholars may be the users who are most affected by splitting publications into pre-1453 and post-1453. Admittedly, the number of Greek publications purchased by US libraries in support of classical and Byzantine studies may be small (mostly the major research universities with graduate programs in these fields) as compared to the publications relevant to modern Greek studies that major collections such as the Library of Congress, Harvard, Princeton, and others acquire. Rhea and others can speak better to the potential consequences for US-based modern Greek scholars. There are many other issues that arise as well, but I hope this can be the start of a constructive discussion. Sincerely, Deb Stewart Librarian, Byzantine Studies Dumbarton Oaks Research Library . . .