On Jun 25, 2008, at 4:37 PM, Steve Oberg wrote:
Ok. What's allowable/possible vs. what is actually defined as part of variable MARC data fields in say MARC21. I'm amused by the hairsplitting. The bottom line is these particular fields are ALEPH specific and are not part of MARC21. I agree with others that accounting for these in whatever parsing program you use should not be a big deal.
Yep, I'm getting ALEPH output, and the issue is not so much whether or not alpha-named fields exist but whether or not my parsing tools (MARC::Batch and friends or Marc4J) handle them correctly. For example, MARC::Batch warns of invalid indicators with values such as " BE". Who ever heard of an indicator being longer than two characters long?
-- Eric
