Romanization in North American Libraries: History, Challenges, and Opportunities

From a user service perspective, this article examines the historical evolution and current challenges of romanization practice in North American libraries, with a particular focus on Chinese script. Romanization, the conversion of non-Roman scripts into the Roman alphabet, emerged in the 19th century as a solution for bibliographic control of non-Roman materials in North American libraries, but has since created various challenges in serving library users.The article, using Chinese romanization as a case study, outlines the development of romanization practice from cataloging rules and codes to the efforts of professional organizations and libraries, highlighting how the practice has evolved in response to changes in cataloging practices and technological advancements. It then analyzes the characteristics of the Chinese script, demonstrating how semantic meaning is lost due to homophony, word division, and tonal characteristics absent in Romanized text. These challenges make Romanized catalog entries problematic for the discovery and access of library resources. After reflecting on the historical context and analyzing current challenges, the article discusses potential policy changes and technological solutions, including advancements in AI, that could address these challenges and better fulfill the ultimate goal of library catalog—connect users with resources.