FW: Announcement on non-Latin characters in name authority records

[Miller, Caroline]

Heb-NACOers,

Please excuse duplication.  This is something we've waited for for many,
many years.  I assume we'll hear more from Joan about official
guidelines and when we can implement.

Caroline

Caroline R. Miller

Head of Monographic Cataloging 

and Authority/Database Maintenance Sections

UCLA Library Cataloging & Metadata Center

BOX 957230 

11020 Kinross Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90095-7230

E-mail:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Phone:  (310) 825-4446

Fax:  (310) 794-9357

 

________________________________

From: Program for Cooperative Cataloging [EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of David W Reser
Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2007 7:02 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Announcement on non-Latin characters in name authority records

 

Announcement on non-Latin characters in name authority records

 

The major authority record exchange partners (British Library, Library
of Congress, National Library of Medicine, and OCLC, Inc., in
consultation with Library and Archives Canada) have agreed to a basic
outline that will allow for the addition of references with non-Latin
characters to name authority records that make up the LC/NACO Authority
File.  

 

While the romanized form will continue to be the authorized heading
(authority record 1XX field), NACO contributors will be able to add
references in non-Latin scripts following MARC 21's "Model B" for
multi-script records.  Model B provides for unlinked non-Latin script
fields with the same MARC tags used for romanized data, such as
authority record 4XX fields.  Using Model B for authorities is a
departure from the current bibliographic record practice of many
Anglo-American libraries where non-Latin characters are exported as 880
fields (Alternate Graphic Representation) using MARC 21's  "Model A" for
multiscript records.  

 

           For the initial implementation period, the use of non-Latin
scripts will be limited to those scripts that are represented in the
MARC-8 repertoire (Japanese, Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Persian, Hebrew,
Yiddish, Cyrillic, and Greek).  Although the exchange of authority
records between the NACO nodes will be in UTF-8, LC's Cataloging
Distribution Service will continue to supply the MDS-Authorities weekly
subscription product in both UTF-8 and MARC-8 for some period of time.
It is expected that the use of non-Latin scripts beyond the MARC-8
repertoire will be implemented in the future.

 

           Guidelines for use by catalogers in formulating non-Latin
references for authority records are still in progress.  

 

           System vendors should be prepared to handle authority records
with non-Latin data no earlier than April 2008.  Test files will be made
available prior to that time.  Questions can be addressed to
[EMAIL PROTECTED]