Nepali libraries hold a lot of books with Nepali titles, and a lot of those titles were typed years ago in fonts like Preeti or Kantipur. On screen they look fine. But ask the computer to find “मुनामदन” and it finds nothing. This article explains why, and how to catalogue Nepali books so they can be searched, sorted and shared.
Why Preeti text can’t be searched
Before Unicode was common in Nepal, people typed Nepali in fonts such as Preeti, Kantipur and
Himali. These fonts work by drawing Devanagari shapes in place of Latin letters. Type the letters
d'gfdbg in Preeti and you see मुनामदन, but the computer has stored d'gfdbg.
That causes three problems for a library catalogue:
- Search fails. Someone searching in Unicode Nepali is searching for different characters than the ones stored.
- Sorting is wrong. Titles sort in the order of the hidden Latin letters, not the Nepali alphabet.
- Text breaks when it moves. Open the file on a computer without the Preeti font, or paste it into another program, and the title turns into symbols.
Unicode fixes all three. It stores each Nepali letter as its own character, the same on every computer and in every program. This is why every modern catalogue, including Koha, relies on Unicode for Nepali.
Converting Preeti records to Unicode
If your old catalogue, accession register or book list was typed in Preeti, you don’t have to retype it.
- Copy the Preeti text out of the Word file, Excel sheet or old database.
- Paste it into a Preeti-to-Unicode converter. Several free ones exist online, for example Ashesh’s converter and Thuprai’s. Some handle whole Word or Excel files.
- Check the output. Converters occasionally get half letters, conjuncts (संयुक्ताक्षर) or punctuation wrong. Read a sample of titles against the books.
- Keep the original file until the new catalogue has been checked.
If different parts of the file were typed in different fonts, convert them separately: a Kantipur passage run through a Preeti converter produces nonsense.
Typing Nepali in Unicode
For new records, type directly in Unicode:
- On Windows, add Nepali as a language under Settings → Time & language to get the built-in
Nepali keyboard. Many people in Nepal install one of the free Nepali Unicode layouts instead:
staff who learned on Preeti often prefer the Traditional layout, which follows Preeti’s key
positions, and others the Romanised layout, where typing
kgives क. - On Android, add Nepali to the keyboard’s languages.
Whichever layout staff use, the text stored is the same Unicode, so it searches the same way.
How to write Nepali book records
A few rules make a Nepali catalogue much easier to search:
- Type the title as it appears on the title page, in Devanagari. Don’t transliterate it into English letters in the title field.
- Be consistent with authors’ names. Decide once whether the family name goes first, and always spell the same author the same way: लक्ष्मीप्रसाद देवकोटा, not sometimes देवकोटा, लक्ष्मीप्रसाद.
- Record the language of each book, so reports can count Nepali and English books separately.
- Keep the ISBN where there is one, but don’t rely on it. Many Nepali books have none, and some share one. See ISBN in Nepal.
Searching Nepali in a catalogue
Search behaves differently for Nepali than for English. Many search engines split text into words at spaces and punctuation, and some split Devanagari in the wrong places, at vowel signs, so a search for part of a word finds nothing.
Khulla avoids that by matching any three characters in a row anywhere in the title, author, ISBN, publisher or shelf mark, so part of a Nepali title finds the book, just as “otte” finds “Potter”. Its whole interface is available in Nepali too.
One limit to know: Khulla’s printed barcode labels use Latin characters for now, so a label for a Nepali book shows the barcode and shelf mark, but not the Nepali title.
Summary
- Preeti looks like Nepali but stores Latin letters, which is why it can’t be searched or sorted.
- Convert old Preeti records with a free converter, then check the result.
- Type new records in Unicode, using whichever Nepali keyboard staff know.
- Be consistent with titles and authors’ names, and your Nepali catalogue will be as easy to search as an English one.
Questions
Why can't I search Nepali titles typed in Preeti?
Preeti is a font that draws Devanagari shapes over Latin letters. The computer stores the Latin letters, so a title that looks like Nepali is really a string of English characters and symbols. Search, sorting and spell-checking only work on the real Nepali characters that Unicode stores.
How do I convert Preeti to Unicode?
Paste the Preeti text into a free Preeti-to-Unicode converter, check the result carefully, especially conjuncts and half letters, and copy the Unicode text into your catalogue. Keep the original file in case you need to correct something.
Which keyboard should I use to type Nepali Unicode?
Windows and Android include a Nepali keyboard, and many people in Nepal install the free Romanised or Traditional Nepali Unicode layouts. All of them produce the same Unicode text, so staff can use whichever they know.
Does Khulla support Nepali?
Yes. Khulla has a full Nepali interface, and titles, authors and member names can be typed and searched in Nepali Unicode. Printed barcode labels use Latin characters for now, so a label shows a Nepali book's barcode and shelf mark but not its title.
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