What's new
December 2023: New chapters have been published on two different aspects of the Slavic world:
A chapter on Distinguishing Bulgarian and Macedonian written by Cammeron Girvin (Library of Congress) provides guidance on how to distinguish texts written in these two closely-related Eastern South Slavic languages
A multi-chapter Sorbian (Wendish) Cataloging Guide, prepared by Milan Pohontsch (Brigham Young University), includes a treasure trove of useful information for catalogers working on Sorbian materials, with individual chapters on:
February 2023: Two chapters have been updated, thanks to Larisa Walsh (U. Chicago):
Guberniias now reflects changes brought in to reflect the incredible work of the ACRL EES Slavic Cataloging and Metadata Committee Task Force on Revision of Name Authority Records for Russian Guberniias, which saw 111 authority updates.
Transcribing Church Slavic has also been updated to reflect the full scale UNICODE capability in OCLC for Cyrillic script, and includes additional instructions on transcription from the Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (DCRM)
Plus the Areas of Disputed Sovereignty chapter has been updated by Mel Bach (Cambridge) to reflect the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia that started in February 2022 and to reflect changes in the LC authority file
November 2022: The List of Slavic Publishing Terms chapter was expanded with addition of Romanian terms, thanks to Marina Morgan of Florida Southern College.
June 29, 2022: A huge new resource compiled by Leigh Billings, Armine Kirakosyan, Irina Muchnik, Marija Rosić, Walter Slater, and Beth Snyder (with special thanks to Barbara Alvarez) at the University of Michigan is now on the site at last - List of Slavic Publishing Terms : Glossary for Identifying Edition Statements in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Languages.
NB The chapter above contains many tables, and Google no longer supports tables on Google Sites (!), so this page looks a bit different; it contains the original Google Doc put together by the compilers as an embedded source. To go into the Doc itself (a non-editable version), you can click here.
June 28, 2022: The issue of authority records for translations where the translation title and the original title normalise identically is now covered in the new chapter Translation with the Same Name as Original Title written by Larisa Walsh (University of Chicago) and Lana Soglasnova (University of Toronto).
June 16, 2021: A new chapter on Authorized Access Points, Subject Headings, and Class Numbers for Galicia is now available. In it Thomas Dousa of the University of Chicago helps catalogers understand the historical forms and definitions of Galicia and provides a list of authorized access points, subject headings, and Library of Congress class numbers for the area.
March 17, 2021: A new chapter on Proposing New Subject Headings for Family Names has now been published on the site. Written by Brenda Carter (University of Pittsburgh) and Larisa Walsh (University of Chicago), the chapter helps catalogers determine the correct form of name for a family and covers such issues as different forms, diacritics, and compound names. Additions to the list of sources to consult about family names at the end of the chapter are welcome.
August 15, 2020: A new chapter on Monographic Series Published by Serials is now on the site! The chapter was written by Kirill Tolpygo of the University of North Carolina and Larisa Walsh of the University of Chicago. The authors explain how to deal with book series such as Biblioteka zhurnala "Geografii︠a︡ v shkole" and how to understand the impact of changes relating to the main serial title when it comes to the authority record of the book series.
April 10, 2020: OCLC Cyrillic automation project (submitted by Peter Fletcher, UCLA)
OCLC and the Library of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) have begun a project to automatically add parallel fields in Cyrillic script in OCLC bibliographic records for resources in Russian. OCLC is targeting over 1 million records, across format, and UCLA is targeting Russian monographs only, specifically those held by the UCLA Library (about 28,000 records). Only descriptive fields and notes will be enhanced with parallel Cyrillic fields. Mixed language records are not included. OCLC has been fixing bad/incorrect characters, such as the apostrophe used in place of the soft sign, etc., processing the corrected records, adding the Cyrillic and replacing the master records.
As a result of this project, catalogers will see 588 MARC fields with this text: “Non-Latin script generated programmatically.” When encountering these processed records, catalogers should review both the Cyrillic and romanized fields. If the records look correct, or if the cataloger revises and replaces the master record with corrections, the 588 note should be removed so other catalogers encountering the same records will not need to repeat these tasks. Examples (at time of writing): OCLC # 7196996, 14130638, 8240983, 8110836.
More about this project here: https://hangingtogether.org/?p=7868
August 5, 2019: The official name of the country formerly known as the Republic of Macedonia (Република Македонија) has recently changed to Republic of North Macedonia (Република Северна Македонија). The change became official in February 2019. Please note: The subject heading Macedonia (Republic) is no longer valid. Catalogers who encounter the subject heading Macedonia (Republic) or its subdivision form in a record are strongly encouraged to change it to the currently valid form North Macedonia. LC’s Policy and Standards Division is currently working on projects to update all of the name and subject authority records that need to be changed to reflect the new country name - North Macedonia.
June 29, 2019: A new chapter has been added to the Slavic Cataloguing Manual on Polish Personal Names! The new chapter, contributed by Leszek Czubik of Stanford University Libraries, covers:
The structure of Polish forenames
The structure of Polish surnames
Plural forms of names and the name authority file
Genitive cases of personal names in statements of responsibility
Prepositions in historic personal names
Diminutive forms of forenames
Peculiarities
Maiden and married names
Surnames with "vel"
June 19, 2019: a new chapter has been added to the Manual, called "Proposed Changes to ALA/LC Macedonian Romanization Table [pending, 2019]".
The proposal was formulated by a working group of the Slavic Cataloging and Metadata Committee (SCMC), of the Association for College and Research Libraries' European Studies Section.
Library of Congress are not currently accepting proposals to alter romanization tables but the SCMC and the Slavic Cataloging Manual editors agreed that it would be useful to publish the proposal-in-waiting on the SCM site.