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