Video Language Coding

The Video Language Coding: Best Practices document has been approved by the Cataloging Policy Committee of OLAC and posted on OLAC's website.

The 2006-2007 task force was charged with creating a set of best practices for coding MARC 008/lang and 041 language information for videos, especially DVDs, and with using that exercise to examine whether any changes could be made to the MARC21 format (coding or directions) that would improve access to the multiple types of language information found on videos. The work of that task force resulted in a number of changes to the MARC format, which are described in appendix 1. This current document, completed by the 2012 task force, provides guidance for coding video language information using the current MARC documentation.

New Greek Romanization Table

News from ALA.

The ALA Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access (CC:DA) has approved the consolidated Greek romanization table of April 2010. This revised table differs from the existing table only in the inclusion in the consolidated table of two archaic letters and additional examples. The consolidated table also does not include Coptic for which a separate table will be developed. The approved consolidated table has replaced the existing table on the Cataloging and Acquisition Web site (http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/roman.html) and will be published in the Summer 2010 issue of Cataloging Service Bulletin. The Policy and Standards Division wishes to express its gratitude to those who commented on the draft table.

Hebrew Script Tool

lc-hebrew-detransliteration allows you to convert from Library of Congress Romanized Hebrew to Hebrew script. Great for adding those 880 fields.

Changes to MARC Code List for Languages

As a result of a formal request from the National Libraries of Serbia and Croatia and those countries' national standards bodies to the ISO 639 Joint Advisory Committee, the MARC language codes for Serbian and Croatian will be changed as below from the ISO 639-2 bibliographic codes (ISO 639-2/B) to the ISO 639-2 terminology codes (ISO 639-2/T). This change also supports established usage in bibliographic databases in Croatia. Because the codes are obsolete, rather than deleted, they may still appear in bibliographic records created before the implementation of this change.

New Code	Language Name	Previously Coded
srp	Serbian	scc
hrv	Croatian	scr

Subscribers can anticipate receiving MARC records reflecting these changes in all distribution services not earlier than September 1, 2008.

MARC Code List for Languages

The 2007 edition of the "MARC Code List for Languages" is now available from the Library of Congress. This new publication contains a list of languages and their associated three-character alphabetic codes that allow for the designation of the language or languages in MARC records. References from variant forms and specific language names assigned to group codes are included.

The list includes all valid codes and code assignments as of September 2007 and supersedes the 2003 edition of the "MARC Code List for Languages." There are 27 code additions and 12 changed code captions in this edition.

An XML version of the 2007 edition of the "MARC Code List for Languages" is available for use in applications.

HTML and PDF versions of the 2007 edition of the "MARC Code List for Languages" are available online.

MARC Code List for Languages

News from LoC

The 2007 edition of the MARC Code List for Languages is now available from the Library of Congress. This new publication contains a list of languages and their associated three-character alphabetic codes that allow for the designation of the language or languages in MARC records. References from variant forms and specific language names assigned to group codes are included. This edition contains 484 discrete codes, of which 55 are used for groups of languages.

The list includes all valid codes and code assignments as of September 2007 and supersedes the 2003 edition of the MARC Code List for Languages. There are 27 code additions and 12 changed code captions in this edition.

An XML version of the 2007 edition of the MARC Code List for Languages is available for use in applications.

New Character Sets in MDS-Maps, MDS-Music, MDS-Visual Materials, MDS-Computer Files

In order to expand the use of non-Latin scripts already used in bibliographic records, the MDS-Maps, MDS-Music, MDS-Visual Materials, and MDS-Computer Files records may now include records containing Japanese, Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Persian, Hebrew, Yiddish, Greek, or Cyrillic script characters. These elements will become valid for distribution no earlier than January 2008.

Any questions regarding the data content of these records can be directed to:

Cataloging Policy & Support Office
email: cpso@loc.gov

Additions to MARC Code List for Languages

The following codes have been approved for use in the international language code standard, ISO 639-2 (Codes for the Representation of Names of Languages--Part 2: alpha-3 code) and are also being added to the MARC Code List for Languages. These are being published in the new 2007 edition of the MARC Code List for Languages.

New code Language name Previously coded

rup Aromanian roa

syc Syriac n/a

Note that this is a new code for Classical Syriac; the existing code "syr" is changing its caption to: Syriac, Modern

zbl Blissymbolics n/a

LC Implementation Plans
Subscribers can anticipate receiving MARC records reflecting these changes in all distribution services not earlier than January 22, 2008.

MARC Language Code

News from the MARC folks. A new 2007 edition of the MARC Language Code list is now available. The publication is presented in PDF with bookmarks for navigation. The list is published from a new XML file that is also made available from the site. The services available from the XML file will be enhanced over the coming months as the other MARC code lists are also released.

Sounds like there may be an API for accessing the code lists. Nice. Then the ILS could just tap that file rather than maintain internal lists and always have current info. That would make the codes useful to other communities as well.

Video Language Coding

The OLAC CAPC Video Language Coding Best Practices Task Force Draft Recommendations (October 2007) are now available.

The task force was charged with creating a set of best practices for coding MARC 008/lang and 041 language information for videos, especially DVDs, and with using that exercise to examine whether any changes could be made to the MARC format (coding or directions) that would improve access to the multiple types of language information found on videos.

Cataloging in Other Languages

The other day I mentioned the problem of identifying just what the language is on some materials. Ukrainian and Russian or the Scandinavian languages can appear very similar to someone who does not speak them. Owen Massey brought language guessers to my attention. For example, the Content Analysis Language Identifier has the ability to distinguish between 47 different languages. It uses UNICODE so it can take most character sets. Thanks Owen for the tip.

Cataloging in Languages Other than English

The Glossary of Bibliographic Information by Language can be a real help when dealing with materials in a language you are not fluent in. It provides translations for common terms used in publishing in Danish, Dutch, French German, Italian Latin, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish Swedish and Turkish. Now the trick is finding out just what the language is. I recently cataloged a map in Czech, Coratian, Polish and Hungarian. It took a good bit of time figuring out that Coratian was one of the languages.