I. Background
In order to help facilitate the approval process of new or revised Romanization tables, the Library of Congress (LC), Committee on Cataloging: African and Asian Materials (CC:AAM), and Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access (CC:DA) within the Metadata and Collections Section of CORE, a division of the American Library Association (ALA), have jointly developed the following guidelines to address Romanization issues. To make the review process as flexible and efficient as possible, LC, CC:AAM, and CC:DA are establishing a Review Board that will appoint Review Subcommittees that will be responsible for coordinating the review and approval of Romanization tables.
These guidelines apply to the creation of new tables and the revision of existing tables when needed and as applicable. Existing tables will not be explicitly revised to conform to these guidelines unless other major changes are warranted.
II. General Goals
- Any future ALA/LC Romanization Tables should be transliteration schemes rather than schemes to replicate pronunciation or guides to pronunciation. Pronunciation is variable around the world.
- Any future ALA/LC Romanization Tables should enable machine-transliteration as much as possible and preferably reversible transliteration.
- Any future ALA/LC Romanization Tables should be in line with internationally accepted standards and/or standards officially sanctioned by the home country when possible.
- These goals may not always be met, but they should be applied on a case-by-case basis in the best possible way.
- Any future ALA/LC Romanization Tables’ revisions should be cost-effective, carefully considering the impact of major retrospective updates in databases and authority files.
III. Review Board
The Review Board consists of a group of seven members with three LC representatives and two representatives from CC:AAM and CC:DA of ALA, respectively. The LC representatives are standing members: ABA Director (or designee), PTCP chief (or designee), and ASME chief (or designee). ALA members serve on a rotation basis in conjunction with the terms they serve on the ALA committee. The RB is responsible for appointing the Review Subcommittee with the assistance of the RB liaison. The RB liaison will designate a chair within the RS. The liaison and the RS collaborate to coordinate the review process.
- Review Board members appointed by CC:DA or CC:AAM must be serving on that committee as a member or liaison at the time of their appointment.
- The appointed members will serve a two-year term on the Review Board with the possibility of renewal.
- The appointed members should serve on a staggered schedule for the purpose of continuity.
Review Board Members (Word : 18.5 KB)
IV. Review Subcommittee
The Review Subcommittee, appointed by the Review Board, is charged with developing, revising and amending, if necessary, a specific Romanization table proposal submitted in an endeavor to work collaboratively with language and subject experts in the communities. The Review Subcommittee will be disbanded after the Review Board has reached the final outcome of the proposal and issued a status report. The Review Subcommittee may serve on a long term basis for certain languages. Multiple experts are needed for languages that have varying regional and local expression (e.g., Arabic, Persian, etc.) For languages spoken by smaller populations (e.g., Georgian, Karakalpak, etc.), the Review Board may go beyond the organizations listed below to acquire the necessary expertise to produce or revise Romanization tables that are accurate and useful. Members of the following organizations that are appropriate for a particular table will be considered in forming the Review Subcommittee. Individuals outside the listed organizations that possess knowledge of the language or script may be considered to serve on the Review Subcommittee.
- Africana Librarians Council (ALC)
- Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL)
- Committee on Technical Processing of Council on East Asian Libraries (CEAL/CTP)
- Committee on Research Materials on Southeast Asia (CORMOSEA)
- Committee on South Asian Libraries and Documentation (CONSALD)
- Middle East Librarians Association (MELA)
- ACRL European Studies Section Slavic Cataloging and Metadata Committee (ESS-SCMC)
- Asian, African, and Middle Eastern Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL/AAMES)
- Consortium of Hellenic Studies Libraries
V. Reviewing Guidelines
- Examine national and international standards before beginning the process of creating a new or revising an existing Romanization table.
- Mapping characters to the Latin script
- Prefer equivalent characters used from the MARC Basic Latin script repertoire as much as possible, but extended Latin characters may also be used.
- Choose a Latin script equivalent for a non-Latin letter, not necessarily based on pronunciation of the letter, but so as to maximize clarity and minimize confusion with the transliteration of other letters. The resulting Latin script equivalents should allow for the reversal of Romanization as systematically as possible, without the application of special algorithms or contextual tests.
- Use extended Latin alphabetic characters sparingly, if needed to support attested orthographic conventions.
- Include a table for numerals if the non-Latin script uses characters other than Western Arabic numerals.
- Modifiers
- Prefer single letter equivalents (e.g., š) to blends (e.g., sh), that is, multiple letter equivalents, unless there is no ambiguity in the use of the blend.
- Use modifier characters (diacritical marks) in conjunction with the basic Latin script characters, but take care to avoid modifier characters that are not widely supported (e.g., ligature marks), or whose positioning over or under a Latin script base letter may interfere with the printing and/or display of that letter.
- Above. Prefer to use the acute (´), grave (`), hacek (ˇ), breve (˘), dieresis (¨), tilde (˜), macron (¯), circumflex (ˆ), and dot above (˙), if needed.
- Below. Avoid modifiers below characters, since they often interfere with portions of Latin letters that descend and when underlining is present. If a modifier below is desired, prefer the dot below (.) or the cedilla (¸)
- Render marks used as guides to pronunciation as diacritics or punctuation marks when necessary to accommodate pronunciation.
- Non-alphabetic script
- In dealing with non-alphabetic scripts, e.g., syllabic scripts, ideographs, the above guidelines should be applied to the extent that they can be.
- Any provisions for aggregation or word division should be based on such factors as international agreement, convenience of use, promotion of consistent application, legacy of the published literature, and ease of online searching.
- Other factors. The impact of file maintenance on legacy records should be considered in revising tables in relation to the ease or difficulty of accomplishing it, the benefits provided by the revisions, and the obligations of and impact on various organizations and institutions.
Template for Romanization Tables Review (Excel : 12 KB)
VI. Reviewing Procedures
- Forwarding proposed new or revised Romanization tables:
- Submit a fully revised table or new table(s) to the Policy, Training, and Cooperative Programs (PTCP) Division, Library of Congress, as an attachment to an electronic mail message sent to [email protected]. The table is preferably in Microsoft Word, so that the file may be updated during the review process.
- Clearly note the proposed revisions either 1) within the table itself or 2) as a separate document indicating what the proposed revisions are and the justification for them.
- Provide pertinent justification, e.g., experts consulted, sources consulted, international standards found, and the need for bibliographic description if proposing new table.
- Review Board appoints Review Subcommittee: Upon receiving the forwarded Romanization table proposal from LC, the Review Board will assign one of the board members as liaison who will work with the organization with knowledge of the language and script listed in Section IV (Review Subcommittee), appoint, and form the Review Subcommittee within 30 days after receiving the proposal. As needed, the Review Subcommittee may invite individuals outside of the traditional library profession with linguistics background for reviewing and commenting on the proposal, including local speakers, and consult leading experts in the country where the language is spoken when possible.
- Review process by Review Subcommittee and other stakeholders: The timeline of the review process should be as flexible and efficient as possible. Review process should be simplified where there is community consensus on a table. The Review Board recommends between 30-60 days for the review period on a new or revised table. After reaching consensus within the Review Subcommittee, it will seek comments from the stakeholder community at large. This is done in several ways:
- Posting the review results along with the draft new or revised table on the Library of Congress Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access public website with a request for comments within 30 days of the posting. The Review Board member from PTCP serves as the webmaster.
- Simultaneously, the draft will be sent to identified stakeholders with the same 30 days to request for comment. The Review Board liaison and Review Subcommittee Chair coordinate the review and commenting.
- The availability of the draft will be noted in a posting to various electronic lists according to the language. See list below.
- Receipt of comments: The request for comments will specify that such comments are to be sent to the email address of the Review Subcommittee Chair. The Subcommittee will evaluate the comments as they are received. Once the Subcommittee reaches consensus, it will revise the draft table as appropriate. The Subcommittee will acknowledge the receipt of comments. When feasible, the Subcommittee may have 30 days to complete this stage work from the beginning of the commenting deadline.
- Approval process by Review Board: The Review Subcommittee will forward draft tables to the Review Board for approval. If the Review Board has comments or disagreements with the submitted draft table, it may be necessary to return to one of the steps above.
- Issuing status report: The Review Board (via PTCP) will issue status reports to the stakeholders and electronic lists
- Posting approved tables: PTCP will post the approved table with date information for versioning purpose on the Library of Congress Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access ALA-LC Romanization Tables website and in Classification Web Plus.
Review Process Template (Word : 16 KB)
VII. Electronic mail discussion lists
The following is a recommended list for soliciting comments on the proposal. Other lists relevant to the language of the proposal are highly recommended.
- Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) ([email protected])
- Autocat ([email protected])
- Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access (CC:DA)
- Committee on Cataloging: African and Asian Materials (CC:AAM)
- Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL) ([email protected])
- Council on East Asia Libraries (CEAL) ([email protected])
- Committee on Research Materials on Southeast Asia (CORMOSEA) ([email protected])
- Africana Librarians Council (ALC) ([email protected])
- Middle East Librarians Association (MELA) ([email protected])
- Committee on South Asian Libraries and Documentation (CONSALD) ([email protected])
- Slavlib -- Slavic Librarian Forum ([email protected])
- ACRL Asian, African, and Middle Eastern Studies Interest Group (ACRL/AAMESIG) ([email protected])
- Consortium of Hellenic Studies Librarians (CoHSL) ([email protected])
Last update: 01/16/2026
