CJK Languages: Searches and Transliteration

Search Normalization

According to the documentation below, Alma is supposed to perform search normalization for CJK languages.  For example, a search for Simplified Chinese characters would return results in both Simplified and Traditional Chinese.  Likewise for Japanese hiragana and katakana.

Knowledge Center > Searching in Alma - Chinese and Korean Characters

However it turns out that this does not work by default.  Ex Libris must set a back end parameter and can only do so for one language.  We decided not to ask for this because it seemed like a bad idea to enable search normalization for one language at the exclusion of others.  Also, Voyager does not support this search normalization either, so the experience for staff will not change much in this area.  Blacklight does support search normalization and should still be able to even after the migration, so this issue should not impact patrons.

Transliteration

Alma also has Normalization Processes that are supposed to perform transliteration for CJK languages.

Knowledge Center > Working with CJK Transliterations in Cataloging

However, they are implemented in a way that is not useful for our purposes.  The Chinese romanization handles characters with multiple readings in a clumsy way (it simply prints out all possibilities).  Japanese romanization does not handle kanji.  And the Korean tools do not perform romanization at all (they simply convert between different Korean writing systems).  Staff will likely continue cataloging within OCLC Connexion and use existing romanization tools.