Cataloguing Arabic Script in Koha:

IAIS Library Experience

Amzari Abu Bakar
Kalsom Sharif
Mohammad Nasaie Nor Rodin
History of Library
Established on last quarter of 2008
Library were called IAIS Library
Dec 2009 until Feb 2010 appointment of 2
new Librarians
Library adopted LCSH and LCC Scheme as
Library standard

Library Collection
IAIS Library need to be very selective and cautious
in its acquisition & related activities.
Concur with the institutes subject concern and
niche areas basically an Islamic Collection,
with approximately 50% in Arabic language.
Collection focus :
The Qur'an, Hadith, Islamic jurisprudence, Islamic
economics, policy studies and governance,
modernity, globalization and selective related
topics
Collection categorized as books , journals,
and non-prints.

Integrated Library System
Main Challenge
To acquire and implement the most suitable
system, which supports Arabic cataloguing and
searching; at the same time handles roman text.
Software to be selected must be within the
budget constraint of the parent organisation.

Integrated Library System
Based on the mentioned requirement the
choice was limited to :
inexpensive but reliable system open source ILS
as opposed to proprietary ILS.
Finally, based on specific users requirements,
budget and availability of local support,
KOHA Open Source integrated library system
was selected.
The Implementation
October 2010 official implementation of KOHA ILS
version 3.02 at IAIS Library.
1
st
. Step - formulate implementation strategy, identify
technical requirements, and setup the systems
parameters.
2
nd
. Step - data migration of the existing records.
3
rd
. Step input new catalogue records [a third party
free catalogue editing tools namely MarcEdit used
to speed up cataloguing].

Currently IAIS library has 2,709 titles.

IAIS library OPAC can be accessed at http://office.iais.org.my.
Arabic Cataloguing Implementation
Strategy
Only title and author in Arabic to be
transliterated.
Language of the catalogue is English - e.g.
bibliographic description such as tag 260 and
300 are in English.

000 00830nam a22002057a 4500
003 IAIS
005 20120229104123.0
008 120229s1991 le||||g |||| 000 0 ara d
040 _aIAIS
_beng
_cIAIS
_dIAIS
050 0 0 _aBP174
_bA844
100 1 _6880-01
_a .
_95004
245 _6880-02
_a /
_c .
260 _aBayrut :
_bDar Ihya' al-'Ulum,
_c1991.
300 _a638 p. ;
_c24 cm.
650 0 _aIslam
_xCustoms and practices.
880 1 _6100-01
_a'Assaf, Ahmad Muhammad.
880 1 3 _6245-02
_aal-Halal wa-al-haram fi al-Islam /
_cAhmad Muhammad 'Assaf.

(Source: http://office.iais.org.my/cgi-bin/koha/opac-
MARCdetail.pl?biblionumber=2170)
KOHA customisation
Database is set to UTF-8 (UCS
Transformation Format8-bit)
Customisation done in zebra configuration
file (words-icu.xml) using ICUCHAIN method.
(note: The customisation work originally
done by Karam Qubsi)

<icu_chain locale="ar">
<transliterate rule="\'>\ "/>
<transliterate rule="[:Number:] { '-' > "/>
<transform rule="[:Control:] Any-Remove"/>
<tokenize rule="l"/>
<transform rule="[[:WhiteSpace:][:Punctuation:]]
Remove"/>
<transform rule="NFD"/>
<transform rule="[:Nonspacing Mark:] Remove"/>
<transform rule="NFC"/>
<transliterate rule="{ > "/>
<transliterate rule="{ > "/>
<transliterate rule="{ > "/>
<transliterate rule="{ > "/>
<transliterate rule="{ > "/>
<transliterate rule="{ > "/>
<transliterate rule="{ > "/>
<transliterate rule="{ > "/>
<transliterate rule="{ > "/>
<transliterate rule="{ > "/>
<transliterate rule="{ > "/>
<transliterate rule="{ > "/>
<transliterate rule="{ > "/>
<transliterate rule="{ > "/>
<transliterate rule="{ > "/>
<transliterate rule="{ > "/>
<transliterate rule="{ > "/>
<transliterate rule="{ > "/>
<transliterate rule="{ > "/>
<transliterate rule="{ > "/>
<transliterate rule="{ > "/>
<transliterate rule="{ > "/>
<transliterate rule="{ > "/>
<transliterate rule="{ > "/>
<transliterate rule="{ > "/>
<transliterate rule="{ > "/>
<transliterate rule="{ > "/>
<transliterate rule="{ > "/>
<transliterate rule="{ > "/>
<transliterate rule="{ > "/>
<transliterate rule="{ > "/>
<display/>
<casemap rule="l"/>
</icu_chain>
Search test before applying Arabic transliteration
indexing
Search test after applying Arabic transliteration
indexing
Search test before and after applying
Arabic transliteration indexing
Test
No
Search Term
Result Hits
(Before)
Result Hits
(After)
1 Author: 215 51
2 Author: 425 51
3 Title: 432 43
4 Title: 429 43
Reference
1. Correcting search of Arabic Records (2013). Retrieved November 15,
2013 from http://wiki.koha-
community.org/wiki/Correcting_Search_of_Arabic_records
2. IAIS library OPAC (2013). Retrieved November 10, 2013 from
http://office.iais.org.my
3. Library of Congress (2013). MARC 21 Format for Bibliographic Data.
Retrieved from http://www.loc.gov/marc/bibliographic/
4. Qubsi, K. (October 26, 2012). Arabic Character Search and Improve in
Koha. Retrieved November 16, 2013 from
http://arkoha.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/blog-post_26.html

THANK YOU!
&
WASSALAM