Middle East and Islamic Studies Library Resources

  Romanization

• Romanization refers to the process of representing non-Latin scripts into Roman (Latin) Alphabet.
• Transliteration, on the other hand, literally refers to converting one script into another.
• Harvard Library uses the American Library Association and Library of Congress Romanization tables for the bibliographic description of non-Latin resources.
• Links to ALA-LC Romanization tables are available at the Library of Congress Website: ALA-LC Romanization Tables

Quick suggestions for searching Arabic resources in HOLLIS:

• Diacritics are not needed for searching
• Initial definite article (al-) is omitted
• Note middle definite articles are retained: For example: Isharat wa-al-tanbihat
• Taa marbutah - ends with an "h" and not an "a": For example: Mutasawwifah
• Pre-fixes and preposition are followed by a hyphen.

• Some records in HOLLIS have Romanization only and do not have parallel titles in the original script.
• To be able to find all the resources available in HOLLIS, It is essential to search in both Romanized and original language script.

Basic Search Box is recommended for keyword and title search.

Browse Search is recommended if you have an authorized form of an author's name, subject, etc.., it's an index search.

Advanced Search is recommended for combined searches using search filters such as "resource type", language, publication date, etc...

(Three-character alphabetic MARC Code List for languages:  Example: ara = Arabic ; per = Persian)

 

You can also search for Arabic, Persian, and Turkish manuscripts using Browse search >>>Call Number-Other >>>: Example: ms ara for Arabic manuscripts

 Three-character alphabetic Language code

 

Remember that there is Hollis Facets for Language Searches.

Please Login through Hollis as World Cat is Subscription Based.

>>>>  Hollis >>> Database>>  World Cat   (here)

First Search / World Cat:  A Bibliographic Utility built from Group of Library Consortium from Around the World, but mainly in North America.  Originated with OCLC.  Is a more comprehensive world catalogue. To make request for this material please use the Harvard form for InterLibrary Loan (please begin here.)

Borrow Direct: A consortium of Ivy Plus Libraries that allows Harvard students, faculty and staff to request items from partner libraries for delivery to Harvard, free of charge.  To Search the Ivy Plus Libraries Collection through Borrow Direct, please begin here.