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Dissertation Information for Clement Arsenault

NAME:
- Clement Arsenault

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- Library and Information Science

SCHOOL:
- University of Toronto (Canada) (2000)

ADVISORS:
- Lynne Howarth

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- Eric Siu-Kwong Yu
- Jack Cain
- Clare Beghtol

MPACT Status: Fully Complete

Title: Word division in the transcription of Chinese script in the title fields of bibliographic records

Abstract: In online bibliographic databases, Romanization of Chinese script can enhance access by facilitating filing, searching, and browsing of records. Recently the Library of Congress announced the replacement of the Wade-Giles Romanization system with the pinyin Romanization system for transcribing Chinese data in its bibliographic records. This decision will have a great impact throughout the North American library community. In its canonical form, pinyin, as opposed to Wade-Giles, aggregates Chinese "words" into single linguistic units. Since Chinese characters represent monosyllabic morphemes rather than words, Chinese text, in its original form, does not provide visual cues as to where a word starts or ends, and, therefore, does not provide guidance for joining syllables when the script is Romanized. In this respect, pinyin entries in bibliographic records could be constructed following either a monosyllabic, or a polysyllabic pattern. Although the former is easier and less costly to implement, the latter method is potentially more beneficial for end-users, since combining single syllables into linguistic units greatly reduces ambiguity, and generates a much larger variety of indexable terms, thus improving precision in online retrieval. The goal of the current study was to investigate if following the polysyllabic method significantly improves retrieval efficiency and effectiveness in item-specific searching within online bibliographic databases. Analysis of the results revealed that aggregation of monosyllables does improve efficiency significantly ( p < .05), especially during keyword-based searches, and that effectiveness is unaffected by the inconsistencies observed in the aggregation format between cataloguer-generated records, and user-input queries.

MPACT Scores for Clement Arsenault

A = 2
C = 1
A+C = 3
T = 2
G = 1
W = 2
TD = 2
TA = 0
calculated 2014-03-10 23:01:16

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