Colleagues: I am delighted to announce that the Hebrew captions have been input into the BM section of the LC classification schedule.
This project was truly a collaborative effort, drawing upon the contributions of colleagues in the AJL community as well as Israel and Judaica Section staff. Sharon Benamou (UCLA), Nancy Sack (University of Hawaii at Manoa), and I input the captions. Joan Biella, Edie Creeger, and Peter Kearney here at the Israel & Judaica Section proofread the document. Lenore Bell provided extensive guidance throughout the process. Paul Weiss of the Policy & Standards Division at LC transferred the captions from an MS-Word document to the schedule itself and gave invaluable feedback. Jasmin Nof (University of Maryland) also contributed some important suggestions. Below are some of the underlying principles/practices that governed our work. 1. Use Hebrew letter equivalents for romanized Hebrew words and phrases, not Hebrew translations of English terms. 2. Provide one Hebrew script form, and not multiple forms. Unlike an authority record, the schedule could not be comprehensive in providing unlimited variant forms. 3. In cases of multiple spellings, use the first spelling provided in the latest edition of the Even-Shoshan dictionary. This was especially relevant when there were possibilities of choosing ketiv male or ketiv haser. 4. Provide the Hebrew script reference only for the caption itself, but not for the see reference directing the user to the caption. 5. For Hebrew script forms of personal names, provide the forms based on predominance in the online catalog or the one found, if any, in ha-Entsiklopedyah ha-Ivrit. 6. In cases such as "Hanukkah prayers" or "Rosh ha-Shanah prayers," do not provide the Hebrew since חנכה is not a correlation of "Hanukkah prayers" and we are not providing translations (i.e. תפילות חנכה). As folks begin to search the schedule using Hebrew search terms, we realize that corrections and fine tuning may be needed. Please send any feedback to me off-list. Many thanks! With best wishes, Aaron Taub
