There is an economy of scale to be gained from centrali zed production of working bibliographic records, but only current material of interest to the immigrant group should be included. Even accuracy can be compromised if this improves usage. Extensive annotation, of fiction and non fiction, supplements Dewey to guide those who might not know the language, but know their readers. The adjudications are the personal opinions of the cataloguers, nonetheless, these are the highly qualified opinions of working librarians, with an in-depth knowledge of language, literature and read ers. A quarterly book selectio n meeting gives members direct access to specialists, feedback to and from suppliers, and is a forum for exchange of information, amongst fellow community librarians.
Transliteration is one, lack of cataloguing rules is another.
There are many voices raised against transliteration. Certainly, one of the main needs for it -ie. But however desirable multi-script records may be, an efficient service without tra nsliteration is impossible in libraries where staff are without language skills, and in an urban public library the number of local languages can be up to three figures. We do as far as we are able. International implementation of e xtended character sets is still more myth than reality.