Within the last month or so, the Library of Congress‘s online catalog received an upgrade that allows users to view and search for records using non-Roman (Unicode) characters in Japanese, Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Persian, Hebrew, and Yiddish. See more information about it on their What’s New for the online catalog help pages. I think this is a big step forward for users and libraries who rely upon LC. For one thing, as far as I know, LC’s is the largest library catalog (for a single library) in the world; and it may also be correct to say that LC produces more cataloging records each year than just about any other library. People all over the world use this resource every day. (Full disclaimer: I happen to work for the vendor that provides LC’s online catalog software, Endeavor Information Systems, Inc.)