[DCRM-L] Confirming 245 formatting for an Arabic & English book

[Dobbs, Zoe]

Hi Abigail,

I’m not a native Arabic speaker, but I have some knowledge of Arabic and Arabic script cataloging. OCLC often messes up the formatting of right-to-left text, especially in fields with a mix of right-to-left and left-to-right. Sometimes I’ll get everything just right, and the moment I validate or produce the record the text gets re-ordered again! But if you right-click the field and uncheck “right-to-left reading order”, the field should look more normal, and you can export the record that way and it’ll hopefully be retained in your ILS. In cases where there is more right-to-left text in multiple subfields, you might have to fiddle around a bit more to get it to appear the way you’d like it to.
I hope that helps and I didn’t misunderstand your concern!

Best,
Zoe

--
Zoe Dobbs
she/her/hers
Catalog/Metadata Librarian
Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library
Yale University
zoe.dobbs at yale.edu<mailto:zoe.dobbs at yale.edu> | 203.432.5098

From: DCRM-L <dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu> On Behalf Of Abby Connick
Sent: Wednesday, February 23, 2022 2:57 PM
To: dcrm-l at lib.byu.edu
Subject: [DCRM-L] Confirming 245 formatting for an Arabic & English book

Hi everyone,

I am currently cataloging an artists' book that is in both English and Arabic. I'm using what appears to be a good PCC record in OCLC, but I wanted to confirm the formatting of the 245 field, as it seems a bit strangely formatted to me. I have not cataloged in Arabic before, so I would appreciate any assistance you can provide!

The OCLC record I'm looking at is #1082269335
(It's for Speaking Subaltern by Jinane Abbadi)

In the record, there are, of course, two 245 fields (one transliterated and one with the original characters). The transliterated title looks correctly formatted -- $a Speaking subaltern = $b Hibr mil 'al-fam : a response ... , but the other 245 has the subtitle (all in English) in $a, the title (both English and Arabic) in $c, and the author in $b. Now, since there are Arabic letters in the field, the text could be read from right to left instead of left to right...but that still looks incorrect.

Am I crazy for thinking this is wrong? Any advice on this would be appreciated!

Thank you!

Abigail Connick
Rare Books Technical Services Project Librarian at Smith College
(but using my personal email)
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