The extended ASCII character set, Latin-1, used in the old MARC systems was always something that was neglected to get mentioned and not at all obvious. Now that more systems are using UNICODE it should be less of a problem, all depends on your system and if you still have legacy data.

Sincerely,
David Bigwood
[log in to unmask]
Lunar and Planetary Institute


-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Laura Smart
Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2011 11:04 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [CODE4LIB] Programmer Orientation to Library/Lib Sci

Hi folks -

What do you include in orientation when you hire a programmer (excellent, experienced, of course), who isn't familiar with library-land?  MARC is a given, ditto the ILS, plus e-resource management back end (OpenURL parsers, proxies and the like).  From those of you who came into libraries for other industries:  what do you wish you knew about libraries, library/info science, and library operations when you began? I'm especially interested in anything which gave you an "ah-ha!" moment when you were working with library data -- the implicit things which didn't make sense until you knew why those
crazy librarians did things the way they did.   Also - which resources
were particularly valuable to you as you gained familiarity with your new environment?

Your insight is deeply appreciated,

Laura J. Smart
Metadata Services Manager, Caltech Library [log in to unmask]@gmail.com