One of the valuable features in OSCAR and WorldCat is the capability to use Unicode to display/search Japanese scripts and characters. Romanization is rather straightforward in Japanese, but this feature sometimes comes handy, for example, when you are unsure how to read personal or geographical names.

Unicode is an international encoding standard that has been adopted to display multiple languages across different platforms and programs. Nowadays, most computers should be able to handle Unicode and display Japanese characters right out of the box. In case you ever have any trouble displaying and typing Japanese scripts, you can find information on configuring your computers many web sites, such as OSU library page, Jim Breen’s Japanese Page, and Alan Wood’s Unicode Resources.

  1. If you start in the OSCAR home page, Unicode now (as of June 2005) displays automatically, so search results display in Japanese. At the same time you also should be able to search in Japanese.
  2. In WorldCat, once you select the 日本語 link on the bottom, the entire screen should switch entirely to Japanese, you should be able to search either in English and Japanese, and the search results the should be displayed with Japanese characters.

Information updated June 30, 2005 – mhd