Re: a note on MARC8 to UTF8 transcoding: Character references

From: Bryan Baldus <bryan.baldus_at_nyob> Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2013 15:45:52 -0600 To: CODE4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU

>So be warned, you may need to add this to your software too.

One of these that may cause problems in some systems (including the ones we use; hopefully our customers' systems deal with it more appropriately) is the character used in the middle of [1],  the Extended Roman "alif" character" which was changed to "&#x02bc;" in 2005 [2], though I only saw that code in bibliographic and authority records starting around April of 2013, about the same time as NAR n 79046204 was updated (I don't believe those were related events, though). Some systems aren't able to translate the &#x02bc to the appropriate ' (apostrophe) character, making searching for things with that character more challenging.

[1] http://lccn.loc.gov/n79046204
[2] http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2005/2005-05.html

Thank you,

Bryan Baldus
Senior Cataloger
Quality Books Inc.
The Best of America's Independent Presses
1-800-323-4241x402
bryan.baldus_at_quality-books.com