> From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
> [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Karen Coyle
> Sent: 27 May, 2007 20:15
> To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] MARC vs XMLMARC
>
> My guess is that expansion to characters beyond a-z, 0-9 is
> hindered by the fact that in many systems humans actually
> input the codes or read the coded data, and thus the various
> punctuation characters would be expected to be especially
> error prone.
I agree, it is doubtful that MARC-21 subfield codes would be
extended to use those symbolic characters. But sometimes they
come in handy for defining local subfields, since only "9" is
an authorized local subfield.
I have personally used them in a few research projects for
local subfields. I wish MARC-21 would just declare all or
most of the symbolic characters as additional local subfield
codes since it is extremely unlikely they will ever be
authorized for use.
> It's less clear to me why the standard is unable
> to accommodate upper case A-Z, but not having been around
> when that decision was made (maybe 40 years ago) I don't know
> the reasoning behind it. Anyone?
If I had to hazard a guess, I suspect that uppercase was not
included in the list in case someone accidentally hit caps
lock during data entry. The system could easily correct the
situation rather than having an ambiguous situation.
Andy.
Received on Sun May 27 2007 - 19:41:26 EDT