Providing variety of writing scripts

Some non-Roman scripts are ideographic or syllabic. Others represent alphabets with no vocalization, where great regional variances in pronunciation can affect the romanization of an unvocalized word or name. In cataloguing work, romanization is particularly problematic for a key set of non-Roman scripts; only the original characters permit accurate bibliographic descriptions and rapid information retrieval. The Research Libraries Group's "JACKPHY Plus" service provides access to the bibliographic records of the Research Libraries Information Network (RLIN) in languages using Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Hebraic, and Cyrillic scripts. In JACKPHY languages, the original script can be romanized in dozens of ways, depending on the context and the language or dialect of the user. Libraries and archives can use these scripts when they catalog their holdings in RLIN; search for others' holdings; and display the records retrieved. The scripts are present in all RLIN displays, online printouts, and machine-readable products. The name "JACKPHY" (Japanese, Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Persian Farsi, Hebrew, and Yiddish) identifies a set of languages particularly prone to inconsistency and ambiguity when romanized. The "Plus" is RLG's addition of Cyrillic to RLIN scripts support.