<html>
<font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>In response to Brother
Anthony's query about the new Korean romanization rules, I would like to
offer a <i>librarian's perspective, </i>which, to my knowledge, has not
been heard during the past romanization debates. This may be a bit
longer answer than Brother Anthony was seeking, but please indulge me for
a few minutes, since it is an important issue for all Korean studies
scholars and authors who want their books to be widely accessed
internationally. <br>
<br>
Since library databases are developed over a long period of time, and are
intended to preserve recorded human knowledge for as long as
possible, it is imperative to maintain bibliographic integrity during the
life span of the stored data. The best way to achieve it is by
following standards consistently. As all of us in the Korean
studies field in the western world are painfully aware,
romanization has been necessary in order to make Korean characters fit
into the roman-based bibliographic and systematic environment of the
West. Only through the vehicle (or bridge) of romanization could
Han’gul characters be integrated into the rest of the bibliographic
world, which is increasingly becoming more and more global in this age of
information technology.<br>
<br>
While there has been much debate over romanization rules in the Korean
studies community, and the Korean government has changed from one system
to another several times in the past, the bibliographic standard in the
Western world has been consistently the McCune-Reischauer Romanization
System (M-R). The Library of Congress (LC) developed additional
rules in order to address the many bibliographically significant issues
that are not covered by the M-R rules, e.g., word division.
The LC guidelines are available at
</font><a href="http://lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/roman.html" eudora="autourl"><font color="#0000FF"><u>http://lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/roman.</a><a href="http://lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/roman.html" eudora="autourl">html<br>
<br>
</a></u></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>There are
currently hundreds of thousand Korean vernacular records in such
international bibliographic databases as OCLC (Online Computer Library
Center) or RLIN (Research Libraries Information Network), contributed my
many member libraries throughout the world. When combined with
records written in other languages on Korea, the size of available
bibliographic data on Korea in international databases is quite
significant. Obviously, switching romanization schemes from one to
another is an extremely expensive proposition for all involved, but
especially for libraries. Thus I would say that the likelihood of
the new Korean romanization scheme to replace the M-R in libraries is not
high at all in the foreseeable
future... <br>
<br>
We librarians eagerly await the day when manual romanization will no
longer be necessary thanks to some wonderful new information technology
or Unicode. Until then, however, it is extremely important for
Korean studies librarians to painstakingly follow the accepted
romanization standards in order to maintain the bibliographic integrity
of the precious resources we develop and manage. By following the
same practice, Korean studies scholars and authors would help to insure
their books' accessibility in the bibliographic world. <br>
<br>
</font>For those who care to learn more about library standards for
Korean romanization or other aspects of Korean librarianship as practiced
in the West, please look for a separate message I will be posting in a
few days, announcing an upcoming book: <i>Korean Librarianship : a
Practical Guide and Manual</i>. <br>
</html>