Word Division in the Transcription of Chinese Script in the Title Fields of Bibliographic Records

ABSTRACT Recently, the Library of Congress adopted the pinyin Romanization system for transcribing Chinese data in its bibliographic records. In its canonical form, pinyin aggregates Chinese “words” into single linguistic units, but pinyin entries could be constructed following either a monosyllabic or a polysyllabic pattern. Although the former is easier and less costly to implement, the latter method is potentially more beneficial for end-users, as it reduces ambiguity, and generates a much larger variety of indexable terms. The current study investigates if following the polysyllabic method improves retrieval efficiency and effectiveness in item-specific searching within online bibliographic databases. Analysis of the results revealed that aggregation of monosyllables does improve efficiency significantly (p < .05), especially during keyword searches, while effectiveness remains mainly unaffected.

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