Herb and all:
I used to do research in Japanese libraries years ago. As I
recall, classification was based in part on Japanese phonology,
not the written form of the word or topic. You had to know the
sound of the word or phrase and its corresponding written form,
which could be either hiragana, katakana, romaji, or kanji
(Chinese characters). Keep in mind, you also had to know your
topic and related classification headings. There are books that
provide these classification headings and you can see an example
in English whenever you look at the LOC headings in a library's
computerized reference info.
It has been many years since I have been in a Japanese library,
but I did not have much trouble finding things. My Japanese was
not that good, but I knew enough basic linguistics, Japanese, and
the library classification system to figure it out. Ironically,
the most difficult thing to do was getting permission to enter the
libraries at different universities around Tokyo. You needed a
letter of introduction from your university. Sometimes they would
deny you permission to enter. The Japanese had a very different
idea about the free flow of ideas. No doubt things have changed.
My first published paper was on Likert scales, which I wrote
entirely in Japan using Japanese libraries with English holdings.
Consider that before Mr. Likert invented these ubiquitous
measurements in the 1930s, they did not exist. I was able to find
his original paper published in 1932 at the U of Tokyo library
along a back wall in a hidden area. Once I found the paper, it was
a eureka moment because I could not have completed my paper
without the original. I also did research using Japanese sources
for my work as a newspaper reporter. I had to find statistics
about the the Japanese educational system, population
demographics, and immigration data, which were all published in
Japanese.
Likert scales, like classification schemes, such as the Library of
Congress headings or the numerous systems of grammar, are social
constructs, subject to constant revision and eventual extinction.
There is an erroneous perception by the public that grammar
descriptions are rule-governed and fixed. Unfortunately, some
pedagogical grammar textbooks aimed at undergraduates reinforce
this belief, especially when they discuss one-off usage rules like
inflammable vs. flammable.
Mike Busch
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type="cite">
And
of course it depends on the alphabet, so Hebrew and Arabic
would alphabetize following the order of their alphabets.
Chinese alphabetizes by the number of strokes in a
character. I have no idea what Japanese or Korean do with
their mixed writing systems.
Herb
When
I worked at a public library, we would have listed J. Navy
first. (You alphabetize word by word, secondarily by
letters within a word.) But there are complications.
Here's a link to the ALA filing rules:
http://www.ala.org/tools/libfactsheets/alalibraryfactsheet27
Of course the whole alphabet is arbitrary, so you could
probably use any system you wanted, as long as it enabled
you to find things again.
Beth
Dr.
Beth Rapp Young
Associate Professor, English
[log in to unmask]
University of Central Florida
"Reach for the Stars"
I have never seen an alphabet
question on the list, but there's a first time for
everything:
If you're
alphabetizing J. Navy and
Jade (two colors), which comes first?
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