I think this is a case of being in violent agreement -- see some earlier replies in this thread -- Pragmatically, if you are going to hew to marc-8 encoding transported in XML -- you are losing the usefulness of standard tools for xml -- smm -----Original Message----- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of LeVan,Ralph Sent: Tuesday, April 17, 2012 4:21 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] MarcXML and char encodings >> No -- it is perfectly legal - -but you MUST declare the encoding to BE Marc8 in the XML prolog, > Wait, how canyou declare a Marc8 encoding in an XML > decleration/prolog/whatever it's called? Nope, you can't do that. There is no approved name for the MARC-8 encoding. As Andy said, the closest you could get would be to make up an experimental name, like x-marc-8, but no tool in the world would recognize that. Ralph