Knjižnica ali arhiv?

Gostujoče pero – Elisabeth Simon

Nemška bibliotekarka, avtorica in založnica Elisabeth Simon se je udeležila mednarodne konference ABDOS, ki je bila od 30. maja do 2. junija v Ljubljani na Ekonomski fakulteti, organizirala pa jo je Centralna ekonomska knjižnica. V času njenega obiska je nastal prispevek o ameriških predsedniških knjižnicah, ki ga objavljamo tokrat.

 

Presidential Libraries - not Archives

Each president of the Unites States is supposed to found his own presidential library. Books represent a smaller part of the collection only, predominantly it contains his notes, diaries and correspondence. In the very popular framework of the discussion concerning the right and the possibilities of access to public and adminstrative information the way papers and other sources were handled in such a library is not without interest. Security of the entire collection and classified material which may be personal set rules of access. Due to security reasons materials are stored in closed files and can only be accessed according to a certain rather strict procedure. Resources which are closed because of personal reasons may only be accessed with the permission of the director, but not the papers classified for national security reasons.

In Europe these libraries would generally be called archives and the focus on access and digitisation is in the forefront of discussions. Being called libraries shows the rather different scope of libraries and archives in the USA. Their main purpose is to ensure general access to information and resources hence these institutions are called libraries, their mission is to maintain the rich collections of unique material and to ensure different ways of accessing them. The presidential libraries are a good example of difficulties which do not arise due to technical problems but those of private data and public access.

Question: How could have Wiki Leak got its material?

Appreciation of terminology and misunderstanding - Internationality of Terminology

Gostujoče pero – Elisabeth Simon

With English emerging as the lingua franca of international and interdisciplinary communication, terminology being the corner stone of professional and scholarly interaction has not lost its importance, on the contrary. With the future internationality the discussion about terminology, and in particular library expressions in our case, can become more intense and this does not refer only to multilingual and multicultural Europe. Discussions about library consortia, which can also be international, the international user, and the development of and access to special material and collections on an international base through the web are signifficant for the new phase of terminology use. The international scope inside the discussion about terminology can be accompanied by deep misunderstanding if the awareness of historical roots and cultural structures of long, historical duration are missing. The fact that Rumanian librarians feel more comfortable in professional relations with French librarians⁽¹⁾ than the English speaking ones is not only caused by better or lacking language skills. The positive development of public libraries in Italy can be recognised by those who had the possibility to observe similar developments in France 20 years ago⁽²⁾. Word lists and dictionaries are not only reflecting the state of the art of the present discussion but also (un)observed similarities in the administration and the somehow unconscious professional connections on a transborder and transcultural level.

There is an illustration appended to the text, Public Library as a term and as a concept, a simple expression used on a daily basis by librarians and omnipresent in the mind of every professional in a library. This simple expression has been chosen because it may illustrate what happens in the mind of each participant attending international symposia, conferences and workshops. If a German librarian says public library, then she or he has a distinctly different image than that of e.g. a librarian from Midwest of the United States. One could say, that this is not of such an importance, that French librarians should know and conceive their terminology the same way Slovenians comprehend their own. But this has become a general postulate today. It is not connected only with the international network of communication and understanding but also with the support of libraries by a growing international framework of co-operation⁽³⁾.

Understanding the different concepts of international colleagues and collaborators in the profession is necessary for surviving not only on international meetings but also for applications at different units of the EU. Otherwise we will constantly be missing the point. A thorough knowledge of and familiarity with terminology up to date and covering a wide range of issues belongs to it, including familiarity with expressions in a number of supporting fields, e.g. in management⁽⁴⁾. It is easily thought that knowledge of management expressions is universal and that it will be understood everywhere, but it can be observed today that the application of these expressions is very often not well balanced, not correct or changes the meaning. Therefore it is necessary that an agreement about the terms of use (e.g. of a fatabase or e-journal) shall be found, with the support of a dictionary of terminology, in best case a multilingual one. But also in this fortunate case we must always be certain that the ideas of professional representatives may differ from each other (e.g. the definition of a book for librarians or publishers). That may not be comfortable, because it forces to clarify the terms in use before entering a discussion, but it also adds to the colour and interest in a profession which for many outside people seems to be dull.

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1. Cf. the book about the university library of Bucarest: Biblioteca centrala universitara dim Bucuresti 1891- 2000. Bucuresti, 2001, 231 pp.
   
2. Les bibliothèques en France 1991- 1997. Paris: Editions de Cercle de la Librairie Collection Bibliothèques, 1998, 315 pp.
   
3. Topics national and international foundations and EU promotion of libraries were discussed in more detail during a seminar at Humboldt University, winter term 2003/2004
   
4. Kanič I., Wells M.: How to present my library: German librarians meet international guests. Berlin: BibSpider 2003, 65 pp.

Tokrat še Hunglish in Itanglese

Pred dvema tednoma smo gostovali na ameriškem blogu BIK Terminology s prispevkom Denglisch, Franglais, Spanglish, Swenglist and the like in predstavili fenomen nenadzorovanega mešanja besed in jezikovnih elementov angleščine v druge jezike, tudi v strokovno terminologijo. Če niste sledili komentarjem, vas opozarjamo na dva zanimiva in dokaj obsežna, ki temeljito dopolnjujeta naš prispevek:

Jeno Demeczky je terminolog in nadzornik kakovosti prevajalske službe pri IBM Hungary, stanje v madžarščini in razloge zanje pa je kot terminolog opisal takole:

The situation is similar in Hungary. About 10% of my national language term proposals are accepted and used by the subject field professionals, in my case it is information technology. The rest of my proposals are used only once, when I submit them to our translators. In most cases, they admit that my proposals are good ones, sometimes even smart solutions, but they are late, subject matter experts already use the English terms, either in their original form, or written using Hungarian phonetics . . . [komentar v celoti]

Licia Corbolante je samostojna prevajalka in terminologinja, pred časom je bila zaposlena pri Microsoft Italia in Microsoft Ireland. Je tudi avtorica zanimivega bloga Terminologia etc. Stanje v italijanskem okolju prikazuje kot jezikoslovka in terminologinja takole:

The use of English words in Italian is variously described as itanglese, itangliano or anglitaliano. Unsurprisingly, assorted pundits regularly voice their concern about the “invasion” of English words, and bemoan the lack of an Italian language authority that might provide guidelines on neologisms and terminology standardization, but according to recent data, use of loanwords is not yet widespread in everyday speech (anglicisms amount to only about 0.7% of basic vocabulary) and it is mainly restricted to specialized domains, such as information technology, economics, finance, politics, sports and fashion . . . [komentar v celoti]

Zanimiv članek 773% increase in the use of English terms in Italian written texts znane prevajalske agencije z analizo velikega števila prevedenih besedil med leti 2000 in 2008 celo ugotavlja, da je italijanščina eden največjih "uvoznikov" angleških besed in akronimov, zato angleščina "kolonizira" italijanski jezik, za kar pa so najbolj zaslužni kar Italijani sami. Bolj pomirjajoč je rezultat iz leta 2010, ki ugotavlja rahlo umirjanje rasti - L’Itanglese continua ad avanzare con un incremento del +223%

Issues on library terminology from the perspective of a German librarian

Gostujoče pero – Elisabeth Simon

Libraries, information professionals and their professional terminology is a topic without limits in time and space. Therefore it is no surprise that today the discussion about terminology has been revived. With the application of information technology in the library work and the information services, including the invasion of electronic media and library materials, the professional discussion about modern technical expressions is growing and becoming very complex. Multidisciplinary approach has become a rule, multilinguality as well. Aggressive domination of foreign expressions, as the sometimes peculiar germanised form of English or US American words, is demonstrating the familiar case of e.g. internet site. This is a German "mutation" of the English words in German pronunciation into Internetseite (internet page). Today we are laughing about the translation of French fiches (catalogue card) into fish and signature into signature, although the correct translation is cote. Expressions from the old German library terminology as hochlesen (which means being educated by reading) or Richtungsstreit (two concepts of public librarianship, ruling the professional discussion before World War 2) or Kitsch als kultureller Übergangswert (Kitsch leading to culture) are today unknown even to professionals. Also the Volksbücherei ⁽¹⁾ (people’s library) lost its connection to people’s education in West Germany in the fifties and after some years in the former East Germany as well. In the United States however some expressions from the past time seem unusually up to date when e.g. during a conference about library buildings (44 years old) guidelines for a product evaluation are given, showing as in the product development program how the costs for an architect shall be evaluated ⁽²⁾. It may be a change for naming the clientele of the libraries, in previous times it was the reader, later the user⁽³⁾ and the customer today. But in 1989 it was still the word consumer ⁽⁴⁾ expressing a more passive attitude of visitors coming into a library. In the Dictionary of Librarianship by Eberhard Sauppe ⁽⁵⁾ the term collection development can be located but the presently most used term resource development is not mentioned. These are some little and simple examples, which should stress the importance of terminology and which show us, that the application of terminology has its limits of application in time and region.

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1. Wolfgang Mühle: zum historischen Programm der allgemein Öffentlichen Bibliothek (AÖB). In: Zehn Jahre DDR, Zehn Jahre Allgemeine Öffentliche Bibliothek. Leipzig, 1959
2. Guidelines for Library Planners. Proceedings of the Library Buildings and Equipment Institute. Chicago, 1960
3. as in Manecke, H.-J., Rückl St. and K.H-. Tänzer: Informationsbedarf und Informationsnutzer. Leipzig, 1985. 144 p.
4. Dictionary of Library and Information Science. English/German – German/English : Wörtberbuch der Bibliotheks- und Informationswissenschaft. Englisch/Deutsch - Deutsch/Englisch. Weinheim und N-.Y., 1989
5. Eberhard Sauppe: Dictionary of Librarianship : Wörterbuch des Bibliothekswesens. München u.a., 1988

Fotografija deklice s knjigo, Vir: What gives 365

Do terminologists still need a library?

Gostujoče pero - Barbara Inge Karsch

With a computer in every household, free access to online research and lightning-fast search possibilities, do terminologists still need librarians? Is the concept of a public place where books and magazines are stored obsolete? I am pleased to accept Ivan’s invitation to post on the "Bibliotekarska terminologija" and share my thoughts on what libraries and librarians mean to terminologists in today’s fast-paced environments.

When I started out at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in 1994, the department head of the translation and interpretation program, Jacolyn Harmer, took us on a tour to familiarize us with the campus resources. When we came to the library, she introduced to us the head librarian, Ann Flower, as “our future best friend.” And indeed we all became well acquainted with Ann, not merely because most of us had a job in the library during some part of our studies. The worst part of leaving Monterey two years later was leaving behind the wonderful resource that the MIIS library is. Most of us wondered how we would survive as translators without it.

Then, the world started changing: Much of the research material today is available in digital format; and much of what we need, we need instantly. BUT we also need much more of it. More precisely, many of our quick decisions are based on internet resources, but we are also making many more decisions per hour than we did back in the nineties or before that. And I can guarantee you that in many of these terminological decisions, we still need to involve a book, printed material or a library. Let me give you a few examples. Any time you need to coin a new term, you do well in consulting the basic language dictionaries, such as the Websters, the Duden, and so on. As I wrote in What I like about ISO 704, not all colleagues do it, but the better ones rely on the standard works. When I worked on German ERP (Enterprise resource planning ) concepts, I absolutely needed to have access to the standard business books (e.g. Gabler Wirtschaftslexikon). So, there is no question—thorough terminology work requires printed material that is generally more meticulously researched than digital information.

Granted we do need the standard books on our desk, as the trip to the library for every terminological entry—terminologists, in my experience, do between nine and 50 per day—would be too time-consuming. But when we do get stuck in our research, we absolutely will take advantage of the wonderful services that librarians offer today: Corporate libraries, for example, allow you to search resources as well as order new material through the Intranet. I used the Microsoft libraries to order standards as well as publications on background subjects that we were starting to get into. One year, for example, our terminologist group planned to get into ontology management. Since that was a topic that was interesting to other departments at Microsoft, the library already had the main books.

As for the public library, I use it all the time. The United States have a wonderful system of libraries that can get you just about anything you need. For one of my articles on the Profile of a Terminologist in Localization Environments, for example, I needed a very expensive publication. Well, I just ordered it. Now, that I have started my own business, I need to learn a lot about running a business, sales and marketing aspects, business plans, etc. I use the online search to find what is available and then order what I need, as I do not want to own all these publications. Most of us in this international life move a lot and we don’t want to haul around cases and cases of books that we only glance through once. I also go to the library to read magazines in German when I need a break. It gets me out of the house and into an environment that I am very comfortable in.

Entrance terrace to the Mercer Island Library by Barbara I. Karsch

I have had no need to ask the librarians at my local library branch, though. For one, I am pretty good at finding what I need myself; and second the system is so well-designed that users can find what they need themselves. The usability of the system shows that it was built by very capable people, and there is no doubt in my mind that we need them. That the relationship between translators or terminologists and their local library or librarian is not as close anymore as it was in the past, is simply a sign of our times: We aren’t on a first-name basis with the butcher or the baker anymore either—which was true in the village where I grew up. But we still need them.

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