On October 17, 2002 Jay Woodson and a small team of student workers successfully completed a yearlong marking project. The project involved remarking 13,988 Chinese volumes from the former Wade-Giles system to Pinyin. The marking project followed from the University of Iowa Libraries Pinyin bibliographic conversion project.

For decades, American libraries used the Wade-Giles system to romanize Chinese texts; however, the international community, the U.S. Government & news media adopted the Pinyin system. In October of 2000, the Library of Congress replaced the Wade-Giles system with the Pinyin system of romanization. The University of Iowa Libraries, like all American libraries, converted to the Pinyin system as well.