One of the Cataloging Maintenance Center’s (CMC) recent projects is the cataloging of a world language collection for United Township High School, a public high school in East Moline, Ill. This collection primarily contains Arabic fiction novels and short stories, although it also contains other languages, including French. Some items were originally written in the world languages, and some are translations.

One of these translations was the English-to-Arabic To Kill a Mockingbird, written by Harper Lee. To catalog this item, cataloger Mary Cornell utilized translation tools, including Google Translate, as well as a Library of Congress record for the English language version. With these tools, Mary was able to create an enhanced copy record that she then replaced in OCLC and sent to the library. The book is just one of 20+ titles cataloged for the United Township High School library.

The catalogers at the Cataloging Maintenance Center can create world language records for a library’s special collection, as they have so far in several world languages, including Arabic. If your library has a collection that you would like to have the Cataloging Maintenance Center catalog, please contact them at cmc@illinoisheartland.org for more information and see if it qualifies for the CMC’s free services.