RE: Initial articles in foreign languages

["Craig Johnson" <CJOHNSON at icpl dot org>]

I find if puzzling that searching in MilCat/MilCirc/etc. (as well as
telnet DBase Maint.) seems to work in a different way entirely - English
initial articles are automatically stripped, while those in other
languages are not and evidently cannot be (except of course by the staff
member as they enter their search). Not sure I get the logic. Is there
something I'm missing?

I'll also wonder aloud again why initial articles aren't displayed in
search results. It's fine that "245_2 A to z" files in the "T's" - it
could be completely transparent if it didn't display as "To z." I doubt
there's a single member of the public anywhere who doesn't scratch their
heads when they see that screen, and I don't blame them. It just seems
so totally klunky to see that in such sophisticated software, and most
other vendors seem have managed a way around it.

Craig Johnson
Iowa City Public Library
cjohnson at icpl dot org 


>>> STROUSE at law dot edu 6/20/2005 5:36 PM >>>
Well, III does follow the 245 second indicator in indexing titles,
which is what the indicator is supposed to control. So 245 03 An affair
to remember gets indexed simply as "affair to remember".
The OPAC options setting deals not at all with indexing, but rather
with search behavior.  I'm old enough to remember when catalog users had
to be trained to leave off leading articles. This is still the case with
Worldcat. This OPAC option was an attempt to unburden the user from
learning and remembering that particular rule. 

A library can still set the OPAC option to null, so that your catalog
will operate exactly like Worldcat -- the input search has to match the
indexed string exactly or you don't get a hit. The burden of identifying
and dropping true leading articles will rest with the user.

Sounds like what you're really asking is that the search engine 1)parse
the user's search string to identify potential initial articles 2)
pre-identify potential hits and then 3) refine the search results based
on indicators in the found MARC records before presenting the final hit
list to the user.  I honestly don't know of any catalog vendor who's
reached that level of sophistication.

The search engine can only strip one leading article per title.  This
gives rise to a work-around for  problem titles (like those beginning
with "A-Z", "Los angeles", etc.) where the library inputs an additional
246 30 with a title like "An An A-Z directory", Los los angeles, An an
die Romer, etc.  Or you could define a special leading article like /__
(slash-space-space)in the OPAC options and place that at the beginning
of these added entries -- as long as you are reasonably confident that
combination of characters won't occur in nature.  

Mary

Mary M. Strouse
Head of Technical Services
Judge Kathryn J. DuFour Law Library
The Catholic University of America
Washington, DC
(202) 319-5547   strouse at law dot cua dot edu 
http://law.cua.edu/library/ 










-----Original Message-----
From: innopac-bounces at innopacusers dot org 
[mailto:innopac-bounces at innopacusers dot org]On Behalf Of Gene Fieg
Sent: Monday, June 20, 2005 5:08 PM
To: 'IUG INNOPAC List'
Subject: RE: Initial articles in foreign languages


Once again, if III's system could read a MARC record directly, we
wouldn't
have this problem.  So if you have a 651 #0 Los Angeles (California),
the
system should know that it is indexed under "Los."   The example given
is a
fine example of a the fact that III only has defacto skip characters. 
We
have the same problem with books entitled An die Romer (To the
Romans).
Because English articles are automatically defaulted (A, An, and The),
we
move to "die" in the display.  However, the MARC record would have 245
10 An
die Romer; the second indicator shows that An should not be skipped,
but
with III's automatic "thinking," that just does not happen.



Gene Fieg
Cataloger
Claremont School of Theology
gfieg at cst dot edu 

-----Original Message-----
From: innopac-bounces at innopacusers dot org 
[mailto:innopac-bounces at innopacusers dot org] On Behalf Of Strouse, Mary
Sent: Monday, June 20, 2005 1:53 PM
To: IUG INNOPAC List
Subject: RE: Initial articles in foreign languages

This is controlled under system options -- OPAC options -- characters
removed from beginning of user typed search. See the manual at #101879.
See
also #101346.

Unlike a, an and the, foreign articles have complexities (beyond the
infamous case of a title beginning with the letter "A").  For example
Los
can be an article or part of a proper noun (Los Angeles). The system
can't
distinguish between the article La and LA.  An article in one language
may
be a preposition in a different (or in the same) language. 

Does anyone have a good, well-tested list of "safe" foreign articles
to
share?

Mary

Mary M. Strouse
Head of Technical Services
Judge Kathryn J. DuFour Law Library
The Catholic University of America
Washington, DC
(202) 319-5547   strouse at law dot cua dot edu 
http://law.cua.edu/library/ 



-----Original Message-----
From: innopac-bounces at innopacusers dot org 
[mailto:innopac-bounces at innopacusers dot org]On Behalf Of Bellinger,
Christina
Sent: Monday, June 20, 2005 4:16 PM
To: innopac at innopacusers dot org 
Subject: Intitial articles in foreign languages


Dear Colleagues,

I know that this has been discussed before, but I cannot find the
discussion in the list archives. 

 We are wondering we are not able to search titles beginning with
articles in languages other than English, even though the language
codes
and skip characters are set correctly.  For example, to search Die
hattisch-hethitischen Bilinguen in our catalog we have to drop the
initial Die.  When we search with the initial article Die, the system
retrieves several titles as if they began with die, but which actally
do
not begin with die.  For example, a search on Die Hattisch ...
retrievies a list including Die Hoffnung, which is actually part of
the
name/title added entry for:

 Valen, Fartein,|d1887-1952.|tAn die Hoffnung

A search on An die Hoffnung retrieves the same list of titles that
appear to begin with Die, until one looks at the records.

            Does anyone know how to get III to treat foreign initial
articles in the same way it treats English language ones?

Christina Bellinger

University of New Hampshire



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