Pinyin

October 3, 2000

To: Patrons of the C. V. Starr East Asian Library
From: Amy V. Heinrich, Director

As some of you may have heard, October 1, 2000 was Day One of the national project to convert all bibliographic records that use the Wade-Giles system of transliteration to Pinyin, used in most other areas that transliterate Chinese language. The project as a whole will take a year to complete, but has begun with catalogers of Chinese language materials starting to use Pinyin.

The records in CLIO for Columbia’s Starr East Asian Library holdings are still in Wade-Giles; they will all be converted at one time, and reloaded into the system, at some point in the next several months. We will try to give you some advance warning. Until that time, you should continue to use Wade-Giles to search for materials, but to make sure you do not overlook very new materials, or materials that are being newly cataloged, you will also then have to do a Pinyin search.

Sheets listing corresponding methods of transliteration are available among the Library flyers near the entrance.