With gorgeous illustrations and over ten languages represented, the Illinois State University Library sent a historical, juvenile world languages collection to the Cataloging Maintenance Center to be cataloged. This collection showcases books that were published primarily in the early twentieth century, from publishers spanning from Japan to Greece. From what the catalogers at the Cataloging Maintenance Center could tell from the items, all of them were donated sometime in the 1950s to the library.

There are three pictures of titles from this collection included in Serbian, Arabic, and Greek. The pictured Serbian title tells of two friends living in the forest and how one friend who is kidnapped must be saved by the other. The pictured Arabic book tells of a young chick who becomes separated from his mother. Lastly, the pictured Greek book tells of a young girl who imagines a life beyond her small farm.

To catalog these items, the catalogers utilized some of their everyday tools like OCLC’s Bibliographic Formats and Standards, but also tools like Google Translate, Lexilogos, and the Thai2English website to assist with translation and Romanization as they cataloged these items.

Do you have a collection of world language items that you need to have cataloged? Contact the Cataloging Maintenance Center about this free service and see if your items qualify at cmc@illinoisheartland.org!