By Rosario Garza
At the American Library Association's Midwinter Meeting in San Antonio, the Research
Libraries Group (RLG) hosted a forum on "More Wade-Giles/Pinyin Conversion Planning."
About 100 participants from a range of libraries and local system vendors attended the
January 16 meeting. The forum report is now available on the RLG Web site at
www.rlg.org/eas/rlgforum2.html.
The report summarizes the coordinated conversion activities of the Library of Congress
(LC), OCLC and RLG. All are working towards a day-one date of October 1, 2000,
when pinyin romanization of Chinese will be used for all new authority and bibliographic
records. The report also documents the results of the forum discussion on the use of the
"pinyin marker" for authority and bibliographic records.
As the library community moves closer to the Wade-Giles/pinyin conversion date, an
updated pinyin conversion timeline, coordinated by LC, OCLC and RLG has been posted
on the Library of Congress' pinyin home page. View the timeline on the pinyin home
page at lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/pinyin/ timeline.html.
The timeline will be updated at least monthly during the year 2000.
