ISO TC46 Athens

CIDOC NEWSLETTER

Volume 9, August 1998

ISO TC46 Athens

Nick Crofts

TC46 is one of ISO's numerous technical committees, responsible for developing and maintaining standards relating to information and documentation. As CIDOC liaison I attended the recent meeting in Athens (May 11 - 15).

Technical committees are divided into subcommittees and working groups with specific areas of interest. TC46 has five main sub committees:

SC2: Conversion of written languages
SC3: Terminology of information and documentation
SC4: Computer related applications in information and documentation
SC8: Statistics and performance evaluation
SC9: Presentation, identification, and description of documents
SC10: Physical keeping of documents.

The life cycle of a sub committee depends very much on the need for the standards it produces. Committees or working groups are created initially in order to formulate a draft standard. This Committee Draft then becomes a Draft International Standard, and if accepted eventually gets published. After a certain period of time, a revision process is initiated to ensure that published standards are either brought up to date, or withdrawn from circulation if they are no longer useful. ISO keeps a careful watch on the use and applicability of the standards it produces. Standards which are not applied or maintained serve no useful purpose and are soon abandoned.

TC46 is currently engaged in a number of interesting projects which I was able to follow in Athens.

SC2 is currently producing or updating a number of standards for transliteration of various scripts into the latin alphabet. These included Hebrew, Korean, Greek, Armenian, Georgian and Cyrillic, Southeast, Asian, Mongolian, and Perso-Arabic. Standard transliteration schemes are of particular interest to museums using computer systems since they allow inscriptions and quotations to be recorded and retrieved in an objective and reliable manner. ISO transcription standards aim to be uniquely reversible : it should be possible to regenerate the original script from the transliteration without loss of detail.

I should point out here that ISO makes a clear distinction between transliteration and transcription. While transcription aims to reproduce the pronunciation of a language using the script of another, the aim of transliteration is restricted to the faithful rendition of the script. ISO transliteration schemes aim to preserve sound values as closely as possible but phonetic accuracy sometimes needs to be sacrificed in the interests of reversibility. As an example, French speakers will pronounce "ch" in the way that English speakers pronounce 'sh'. Spanish speakers may pronounce 'v' like an English speaker's 'b', and vice versus. ISO transliterations cannot be taken as a reliable guide to pronunciation. SC3 is currently working on terminology to describe collections and holdings. (You may have seen a copy of part of this draft which I sent to the CIDOC-MEMBERS list a few months ago asking for comments). This extremely detailed standard will provide a useful reference for the description and classification of different types of documents and collections. Each term is accompanied by scope notes, a standard abbreviation and a translation in French. Currently the standard is heavily biased towards the needs of libraries and archives though more detailed information concerning museum collections could be included. This is a new standard and is not yet available, however, I can provide copies of the draft to anyone interested.

SC9 is currently working on two standard numbering schemes which could be of direct interest to museums intended as a standard numbering system for audio-visual publications such as video tapes and films, and ISWC is a code for identifying works. The notion of 'work' used here relates to intellectual content, and is intended to apply to objects not already covered by existing numbering schemes.

Much interesting work is going on which I was unable to cover in detail, notably the introduction of Dublin Core as a new work item.

Liaison with TC46 enables CIDOC to influence the direction and character of relevant standards while they are being formulated and to remain informed about new initiatives. The presence of CIDOC is particularly appreciated and input is often solicited. If you have any questions, please get in touch.

Nick Crofts
CIDOC ISO TC46 Liaison

IGVG-Informatique Générale
Rue du Grand Pré, 9
1211 Genève 2
Switzerland
Email: nicholas.crofts@ville-ge.ch