Page 250 - DLIS006_INFORMATION SOURCES AND SERVICES

Unit 12: Bibliographical Sources

Notes
the arrangement of multilingual INB records. Finally the software became stabilized.
Thus backlog works were cleared. INB became up-to-date. Now all the data from 1958 is
available on machine-readable format. All the language divisions enter data on the
computer using LibSys software from manually prepared datasheet. If there is any Class
number, which does not exist in the Subject Directory, the same has to be added in the
subject directory. Next step is generation of INB and taking print out language wise. After
proof reading and online editing of data by all language divisions, print out in all languages
together has been taken again. General editing is done by rotation basis. After the proof
reading and on line correction of data, the camera-ready copy of INB is generated. This is
then sending to press for multiple copies.

Over the years, unprecedented growth has occurred in publication output of regional
languages in India; it is of utmost importance to document all the resources published in
vernacular languages. The multilingual situation in India required a general bibliography
in Roman script and language bibliographies separately in concerned languages. The
language bibliographies were sent to the respective state to print and publish. But it did
not work for a long and most of the language bibliographies perished. CRL authority has
seriously thought about the revival of language bibliography. So it was decided to upgrade
the LibSys software (LS Premia). CRL has adopted the internationally accepted MACR 21
and UNICODE compliant system. UNICODE is used for entering language script.

Issues of Language and Script
India is a multilingual nation with various scripts. At the beginning stage one of the major
problems faced by the INB unit was that of scripts. Dr. Suniti Kumar Chatterjee, a well-
known scholar, suggested the roman script with diacritical marks and thus name of authors
and titles in Indian languages are transliterated into roman script with diacritical marks
wherever necessary. In the case of English books, only Indic authors are transliterated into
roman script. Foreign authors remains as the same international standard. It was a far
sighted decision which promoted its national and international usefulness. In the initial
stage, CDAC’s GIST technology was used for entering the language records, which employs
the extended ASCII codes for coding Indian language characters (ISCII). But ISCII had
limitations in bibliographic data handling and management.
As per the International Conference on National Bibliographic Services (ICNBS) 1998
“The national bibliography should include records for materials in all languages and/or
scripts in which publications are produced within a state; and wherever possible these
records should include the languages and/or scripts in which the publications originally
appeared.” Based on that, from 2010 onwards INB has also adopted the system of entering
the records in the language of the publications and the system is automatically generating
the 880 tag (roman transliteration) for every field. If required, one can edit the 880 tag and
this can be saved. Now INB in roman script as well as language bibliographies can be
generated simultaneously. Thus we get two products - Indian National Bibliography and
language bibliography by entering one record. This is a landmark for a multilingual
country like India.
India, being a multilingual country, it is very essential to retain the option of romanizing
bibliographic records for Indian National Bibliography.
INB is unique when compared with other National bibliographies, since 14 languages
come under one umbrella. A lot of problems were at the time of computerization. The
main problem was that the arrangement of multilingual INB records, since integrating
Indian language scripts having the heterogeneous characteristics in one sequence is not an
easy task. Author and title has to be arranged according to the alphabetical order irrespective
of the diacritical marks.
Contd....

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