CHINESE PLACE NAMES


In anticipation of the Library of Congress changing from the
Wade-Giles system of romanization for Chinese to pinyin, the Library
is beginning to revise a closed list of Chinese place names
representing the provinces and major cities of China that are
currently established in conventional English-language form that has
been based on the Wade-Giles system or on other systems of
romanization.  In addition, the provincial capitals will be revised,
whether the current headings are established in a conventional
English-language form or systematically romanized.  In all, about 80
place names will be revised.

The Library has already begun to change the authority records for
these place names.  Once the authority record is revised, the Library
will begin to revise other authority records on which those geographic
names have been used as entry elements for or qualifiers to other
headings or references.  Upon completion of the revisions to the
authority records, the associated bibliographic records will be
changed, although this may actually occur at the time the Library's
database of Chinese records is converted programatically to pinyin.
Bibliographic records in other than Chinese will be done separately.

The Library would like to invite NACO contributors to participate in
making changes to authority records.  Volunteers are being asked to
change all of the authority records related to one or more provinces,
cities or districts.  For some place names, there will be only a few
related authority records, while for others there may be more than
100.  Please help us change these related headings quickly and
efficiently!

If you are interested in participating, or wish to see a list of
current and revised headings, please contact:
        Philip Melzer, Team Leader
        Korean-Chinese Cataloging Team, RCCD
        email:  [log in to unmask]
        phone:  (202) 707-7961