Eric, You might want to look at ISO 2709 - the standard giving the
format underlying MARC records. It allows alpha values for the tags. But
MARC does not allow alpha values. Wikipedia give a brief summary,
although the ISO standard is only 6 pages long.

Peter Noerr

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
Of
> Eric Lease Morgan
> Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2008 12:21 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: [CODE4LIB] alpha characters used for field names
> 
> Are alpha characters used for field names valid in MARC records?
> 
> When we do dumps of MARC records our ILS often dumps them with FMT and
> CAT field names. So not only do I have glorious 246 fields and 100
> fields but I also have CAT fields and FMT fields. Are these features
> of my ILS -- extensions of the standard -- or really a part of MARC?
> Moreover, does something like Marc4J or MARC::Batch and friends deal
> with these alpha field names correctly?
> 
> --
> Eric Lease Morgan