Dear Members of the Modern Greek Studies Association,

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The Library of Congress Cataloging Policy and Support Office (CPSO) has 

published a draft revision of the ALA/LC romanization table for Greek in 

the Cataloging Services Bulletin (no. 105, Summer 2004). The proposed 

revision is based entirely on the Greek romanization table approved by the 

International Organization for Standardization. The only variation from 

that standard will be to retain the romanization of Phi as Ph, ph, in 

Classical Greek, and to retain the B for Beta in Classical Greek. The CPSO 

has requested comments by October 31, 2004. Although not stated in the 

draft proposal, they plan to retain the rough breathing "h" *only* when the 

item in hand actually has a daseia, which differs from the current 

practice, which is to assume that the rough breathing is there even if it 

is not.

The implications of this change are great.  It will cause Greek 

bibliographic records in databases to have split indexes, and will also 

split the authority file. As far as any automated clean-up project is 

concerned, it will require significant planning and will ultimately require 

manual corrections.  Below are a few examples as to how the table changes 

affect specific words:

  The word for Greeks is now transliterated as hoi Hell¯enes. The revision 

will require that we transliterate it as oi Ell¯ines. All Greek words in 

the database that begin with an ypsilon, have rough breathing, as well as 

hundreds of other words. So, the word for health, now transliterated as h¯e 

hygeia would be ¯i ygeia, and the word for society, association, now 

romanized as h¯e hetaireia would now be ¯i etaireia. Further complicating 

matters, certain consonant combinations (Gamma Gamma, Gamma Kappa, etc.) 

are transliterated differently in the two schemes. For example, the Greek 

word for moon, now romanized as to phengari, would be to feggari with the 

new table. The author Bampini¯ot¯es, Ge¯orgios, would now be entered as 

Mpampini¯ot¯is, Ge¯orgios. The treatment of the Greek double vowels 

(diphthongs) will remain the same.