On Fri, Jun 29, 2012 at 7:04 AM, Reese, Terry
<[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> I wouldn't.  One of the benefits of marcxml is that you are not
> constrained by marcs record length issues.  Deciding to calculate that
> value would add an arbitrary length limitation to the format (in my
> opinion).
>

Not to mention that the value includes the length added by the internal
index. The internal index is not represented in MARCXML and constitutes a
substantial portion of the total record length when there are a large
number of fields.  If someone has actually implemented a system that uses
this value, the designers can be dismissed as being completely mental.

kyle