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