Re: jewish music databases

[Lori Cahan-Simon <l_cahan...>]

Eliott, could you enlighten us as to the LC's transliteration scheme?
Thanks,
Lorele

Eliott Kahn wrote:

> Dear Roger:
>
> Your problem is one continually confronted by libraries cataloging Jewish 
> music. The best on-line world data base for music is OCLC, yet they still 
> haven't developed use of Hebrew fonts. Every Hebrew and Yiddish title must be 
> "romanized" according to standard Library of Congress procedure. This is an 
> arcane task--particularly to those of us without a strong knowledge of modern 
> Hebrew grammar. Also, be informed that LC's romanization scheme is different 
> from YIVO's.
>
> I confront this problem continually when I have to catalog scores of Jewish 
> liturgical music. Our local Aleph system supports Hebrew fonts, but OCLC, on 
> which I always catalog to provide world access, does not.
>
> In my 6+ years experience of cataloging Jewish music manuscripts, and that's 
> everything from nineteenth-century cantors books with Hebrew characters under 
> the notes to late twentieth-century works for the Reform synagogue, I would 
> seriously advise you--if you have the liberty of creating your own 
> system--use only Hebrew characters. Otherwise, every time you look up a piece 
> by its title, you would be confronted by the numerous spellings of the 
> numerous places where Jews have lived--not too mention the Sephardit vs. 
> Ashkenaz way of pronouncing the "kometz" vowel.
>
> Here are a few of the spellings I have found for Veshamru:
>
> Weshamru,   W'shomru, W'shomeru, Veshamru, V'shomru, Veshomeru, W'somru 
> (Romanian).
>
> Then there's Unasaneh tokef,  Unataneh tokef ...
>
> Anyway, you get the idea.
>
> Eliott Kahn
>
> At 01:12 PM 1/25/01 -0500, you wrote:
> >Not about music but about keeping track of and finding it:
> >
> >I've started cataloging my Hasidic records in an Access (ptui ptui ptui)
> >database.  What I'd really like to do tho is also catalog the tunes
> >themselves.
> >
> >A problem is inconsistant transliteration.  For example, I probably
> >have a dozen different version of Lecha Dodi  or L'Cha Doidi or Lechah
> >Doideh.
> >
> >The best solution to my mind is to enter tune names in the character
> >set appropriate for the language; eg to enter Lecha Dodi in Hebrew.
> >Ignoring vowel points, all the above would spell identically.
> >
> >I see that the Freedman Collection at the U of P seems to be able
> >to do that.  My database experience in Sybase is vast, in Access
> >not so vast, but in either case having diffferent languages and
> >character sets for different fields is not something the DBMS
> >makes particularly simple.
> >
> >Has anyone in this list tried such a thing?  I tried contacting
> >the people who worked on the Freedman Collection but didn't hear
> >from them.
> >
> >roger
> >
> >--
> >r l reid        ro (at) panix(dot)com
> >
>

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