Multiscript records in the ALEPH integrated library system

Abstract

In 2011 the ELTE University Library, celebrating its 450th anniversary, changed its integrated library system: it has migrated from HORIZON to ALEPH. With the Senate decision accepting the University Library’s network reform plan – and in accordance with the requirements of introducing a unified ILS – the university aimed to increase the accessibility of its 3.6 million documents within the unified database from 24% to 30%. The University Library set as its primary goal the cataloguing of the literature in rare (exotic) languages. Since these publications had been earlier processed at extremely diverse levels and with extremely diverse methods, their integration into the ALEPH system raised different possibilities; e.g. it is only possible to develop a usable catalogue of the Confucius Institute Library if both the original script and the relevant Latin transcription of materials are applied. Since ALEPH is based on Unicode, it offers multilingual and multifont support; the catalogue’s content and interface can be displayed in more than 20 languages. The so-called multiscript records are records which publish the data in two or more scripts, in connected fields (in a parallel manner). At the moment, from among the libraries of ELTE this method is used in the Far-East Institute and in the Confucius Institute. The article discusses the relevant practice in detail.