Re: German-Library Collation

From: Marc Wilhelm Kuester (zrlku01@imap4serv.uni-tuebingen.de)
Date: Tue Mar 10 1998 - 10:01:13 EST


> > Tex Texin wrote:
> >
> > >I have some questions about a sort ordering known as German-Library
> > >Collation. I had asked a while back about where I could get a copy of
> the
> > >standard, but hit a dead end. Does anyone here have a knowledge of the
> > >standard so that I could ask a few questions? Of course if I could
> > >actually get a copy that would be outstanding.
> > >
> > >The questions are about non-alphabetic characters such as space,
> double
> > >quote, and other punctuation marks and whether the standard specifies
> an
> > >ordering for them.
Joan Aliprant wrote
> >
> > You may be looking for:
> >
> > Regeln fur die alphabetische Katalogisierung ... by the Verein
> Deutscher
> > Bibliothekare, Kommission fur Alphabetische Katalogisierung. Munchen :
> Der
> > Verein, 1975.
>

DIN 5007 ---whose current version dates April 1991 --- and the
"Regeln fuer die alphabetische Katalogisierung in wissenschaftlichen
Bibliotheken" (most current version Berlin: Deutsches
Bibliotheksinstitut, 2. ueberarbeitete Auflage, 2.
Ergaenzungslieferung, Berlin 1996) have very few connections.
 
  DIN 5007 is an ordering standard in the strict sense, i. e. defines
in what order Latin letters are to be put. It describes a multilevel
ordering procedure. That is probably what you want. It basically
rules that
  a) for names, Umlaute (e. g. ae) are to be treated as
"ae", "oe", "ue" on the first ordering level, all other accents being
ignored on that level and taken into account in the second one.
  b) for words which are not names, Umlaute are equalized with
their basic form on the first level and taken care of in the second
one.
  In both cases, sharp s is decomposed to ss on the first
ordering level and shifted after ss on the second one (the classic
example is Masse before Masse.
    Letters with diacritical marks come after those without on the
second ordering level (diacritical marks are treated from left to
right).
   On the third level, lowercase comes before uppercase.
    More details on demand.

  The "Regeln fuer die alphabetische Katalogisierung in
wissenschaftlichen Bibliotheken" (Rules for alphabetical calaloguing
in academic libraries, usually known as RAK) are a classical example
of *sorting* rules. A massive 500 A4 pages in volume, they define in
great detail how to catalogue the author(s) of a book (what is an
author, how can you spot his name on a page, what to do with
anonyma, what is a Christian name in different languages, what to do
with classical authors, with authors usually known under one name,
but appearing on the title page in a different spelling...), the
title (what is a title etc.), what to do with titles in non-Latin
scripts (transliteration schemes) etc. etc. It is a very valuable
pool of information for librarians and contains a lot of
interesting information for localization, but may be not what you
were looking for in your case.

   

  
  Best regards,

        Marc Kuester

***************************************************
Marc Wilhelm Kuester

Computing Centre of the University of Tuebingen
Dept. Literary and Documentary Data Processing
Waechterstr. 76
72074 Tuebingen

Tel.: +49 / 7071 / 29-70348 (has just changed!!!)
Fax: +49 / 7071 / 29-5912
EMail: marc.kuester@zdv.uni-tuebingen.de



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