Erroneous information was posted to the MARC list by Jim Agenbroad today.
Mr. Agenbroad misinterpreted comments made at an internal meeting and sent
a message without checking with our office. I want to clarify the
information.
At this time the MARC format specifies a repertoire of characters encoded
in what is called MARC (including over 16,000 characters covering Latin,
extended Latin, Arabic, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, Chinese Japanese, and
Korean). It indicates two encodings for the repertoire in 8-bit/24- bit
and an alternative encoding in Unicode (UTF-8 form). Those are the current
official repertoire and encodings that support exchange of information from
and to many countries and environments. The repertoire and encoding are
specified (or pointed to) on the MARC 21 web site (www.loc.gov/marc) in the
MARC 21 specifications document (www.loc.gov/marc/specifications/).
It is well known that Unicode includes many additional characters that
duplicate and augment the MARC repertoire, and I have mentioned at recent
MARC meetings that in the future, as we move into the Unicode environment,
we will need to work out how we handle a full Unicode repertoire without
unduly complicating interchange. NDMSO is having a study carried out that
examines the different conflicts and possible problems and recommends
approaches to dealing with them. This study will be made available for
discussion and comment as we move forward.
If anyone forwarded Mr. Agenbroad's message to others, please also forward
this clarification.
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Sally H. McCallum, Chief, Network Development and
MARC Standards Office, Library of Congress
Washington, DC 20540 USA
[log in to unmask] (Fax: 1-202-707 0115) (Voice: 1-202-707 5119)
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