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Korean Studies

Welcome to the Korean Studies research guide

Searching the Library catalogue for Korean titles.

You can search the  SOAS Library Catalogue in both English and Korean but pre 2000 titles may not have Korean character

Searching by romanization is recommended although searching by Korean is also possible. Some old cataloguing records do not contain the original Korean script. The Korean search has to use exact scripts of hangul and hanja.

  1. Korean language books are romanized using the McCune-Reischauer System.
  2. The breve in o, u, yo and ui, and the apostrophe in k’, t’, p’ and ch’ may be omitted when a search is being made.
  3. Korean titles should be searched for with proper word divisions. Please try with as many divisions as possible if a title is not found in an online search. Examples of word divisions are:
  • Hanguk  yosong  yonchulsa  wa  mihak
  • Hyondae  ui  chongchi

Classmark

  • Western language publications are arranged by country prefixed by a letter code    
    • DK = Korea
    • DKN = North Korea
    • DKS = South Korea
  • Vernacular language publications are arranged by language prefixed by a letter code    
    • CD = Korean
  • Re-shelving : Level C -  shelves on the wall near stack 72
  • Main collection: Level C (stacks 81 - 96)

Off-site material

  • Part of the collection is held in off-site storage. See Location List for details of classmarks
  • To request off-site material click on the link just above the book title

Personal authors and creators include editors, performers, artists, etc. Group authors and creators include corporate entities, government bodies, conferences, jurisdictions, etc.

For personal authors, type last name first and add a hyphen between two characters of the Korean first name. Romanize as Yi for 이 or 리.

Example>

  • 김영하 Kim, Young-ha, 1968-
  • 박경리 Pak, Kyong-ni
  • 이광수 Yi, Kwang-su

 

For group authors, separate each word or lexical unit.

Example>

  • 국립중앙박물관Kungnip Chungang Pangmulgwan
  • 이화여자대학교 한국문화연구원 Ihwa Yoja Taehakkyo Hanguk Munhwa Yonguwon

 

Detailed rules can be found at the Library of Congress site: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/korean.pdf

The keyword search is set up to look for any of the words entered from all fields including title, author, subjects, etc.

Enclose words in “ ” (quotation marks) to retrieve the exact phrase. If a keyword search retrieves too many records, limit your search by format or publication date.

Example>

  • 불교 학회 “pulgyo” “hakhoe”
  • 근대 소설 “kundae” “sosol”
  • 고전 소설 Kojŏn sosŏl

Please note that it is NOT necessary to enter any diacritics to search for a word.

If you are not familiar with how to Romanize a name or word, you can enter it in Korean Han’gul or Hanja.

Books anterior to 2000 may or may not have original script included in their library record. Please note that searching by romanization is the only reliable way to find Korean materials in Library Catalogue Search for older materials.

 

Example>

  • “한글학회”
  • “조선” “역사”
  • “조선 역사”

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