All these should end up in the hypothetical if not actual MARCthulhu
repository. Anybody heard from Simon whether that is still happening or
not? If he doesn't have anything, we should just start a fresh pile on
github.
--joe
On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 12:01 PM, Doran, Michael D <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hi Sophie,
>
> > To better understand the character encoding issue, can anybody
> > point me to some resources or list like UTF8 encoded data but
> > not in the MARC8 character set?
>
> That question doesn't lend itself to an easy answer. The full MARC-8
> repertoire (when you include all of the alternate character sets) has over
> 16,000 characters. The latest version of Unicode consists of a repertoire
> of more than 110,000 characters. So a list of UTF8 encoded data not in the
> MARC8 character set, would be a pretty long list.
>
> For a more *general* understanding of character encoding issues, I would
> recommend the following resources:
>
> For a quick library-centric overview, "Coded Character Sets: A Technical
> Primer for Librarians" web page [1]. Included is a page on "Resources on
> the Web", which has an emphasis on library automation and the internet
> environment [2].
>
> For a good explanation about how character sets work in relational
> databases (as part of the more general topic of globalization/I18n), the
> Oracle "Globalization Support Guide" [3].
>
> For all the ins and outs of Unicode, the book "Unicode Explained" by Jukka
> Korpela [4].
>
> -- Michael
>
> [1] http://rocky.uta.edu/doran/charsets/
>
> [2] http://rocky.uta.edu/doran/charsets/resources.html
>
> [3] http://docs.oracle.com/cd/B19306_01/server.102/b14225/toc.htm
>
> [4] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/059610121X/
>
> # Michael Doran, Systems Librarian
> # University of Texas at Arlington
> # 817-272-5326 office
> # 817-688-1926 mobile
> # [log in to unmask]
> # http://rocky.uta.edu/doran/
>
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
> > Deng, Sai
> > Sent: Friday, April 20, 2012 8:55 AM
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> > Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] more on MARC char encoding
> >
> > If a canned cleaner can be added in MarcEdit to deal with "smart
> > quotes/values," that will be great! Besides the smart quotes, please
> > consider other special characters including Chemistry and mathematics
> > symbols (these are different types of special characters, right?) To
> > better understand the character encoding issue, can anybody point me to
> > some resources or list like UTF8 encoded data but not in the MARC8
> > character set? Thanks a lot.
> > Sophie
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
> > Jonathan Rochkind
> > Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2012 2:14 PM
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> > Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] more on MARC char encoding
> >
> > Ah, thanks Terry.
> >
> > That canned cleaner in MarcEdit sounds potentially useful -- I'm in a
> > continuing battle to keep the character encoding in our local marc corpus
> > clean.
> >
> > (The real blame here is on cataloger interfaces that let catalogers save
> > data that are illegal bytes for the character set it's being saved as.
> > And/or display the data back to the cataloger using a translation that
> > lets them show up as expected even though they are _wrong_ for the
> > character set being saved as. Connexion is theoretically the rolls royce
> > of cataloger interfaces, does it do this? Gosh I hope not.)
> >
> > On 4/19/2012 2:20 PM, Reese, Terry wrote:
> > > Actually -- the issue isn't one of MARC8 versus UTF8 (since this data
> > is being harvested from DSpace and is UTF8 encoded). It's actually an
> > issue with user entered data -- specifically, smart quotes and the like.
> > These values obviously are not in the MARC8 characterset and cause many
> > who transform user entered data (which tend to be used by default on
> > Windows) from XML to MARC. If you are sticking with a strickly UTF8
> > based system, there generally are not issues because these are valid
> > characters. If you move them into a system where the data needs to be
> > represented in MARC -- then you have more problems.
> > >
> > > We do a lot of harvesting, and because of that, we run into these types
> > of issues moving data that is in UTF8, but has characters not represented
> > in MARC8, from into Connexion and having some of that data flattened.
> > Given the wide range of data not in the MARC8 set that can show up in
> > UTF8, it's not a surprise that this would happen. My guess is that you
> > could add a template to your XSLT translation that attempted to filter
> > the most common forms of these "smart quotes/values" and replace them
> > with the more standard values. Likewise, if there was a great enough
> > need, I could provide a canned cleaner in MarcEdit that could fix many of
> > the most common varieties of these "smart quotes/values".
> > >
> > > --TR
> > >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
> > > Of Jonathan Rochkind
> > > Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2012 11:13 AM
> > > To: [log in to unmask]
> > > Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] more on MARC char encoding
> > >
> > > If your records are really in MARC8 not UTF8, your best bet is to use a
> > tool to convert them to UTF8 before hitting your XSLT.
> > >
> > > The open source 'yaz' command line tools can do it for Marc21.
> > >
> > > The Marc4J package can do it in java, and probably work for any MARC
> > variant not just Marc21.
> > >
> > > Char encoding issues are tricky. You might want to first figure out if
> > your records are really in Marc8, thus the problems, or if instead they
> > illegally contain bad data or data in some other encoding (Latin1).
> > >
> > > Char encoding is a tricky topic, you might want to do some reading on
> > it in general. The Unicode docs are pretty decent.
> > >
> > > On 4/19/2012 11:06 AM, Deng, Sai wrote:
> > >> Hi list,
> > >> I am a Metadata librarian but not a programmer, sorry if my question
> > seems naïve. We use XSLT stylesheet to transform some harvested DC
> > records from DSpace to MARC in MarcEdit, and then export them to OCLC.
> > >> Some characters do not display correctly and need manual editing, for
> > example:
> > >> In MarcEditor
> > Transferred to OCLC Edit in OCLC
> > >> Bayes’ theorem
> > Bayes⁰́₉ theorem Bayes' theorem
> > >> ―it won‘t happen here‖ attitude ⁰́₅it won⁰́₈t happen
> here⁰́₆
> > attitude "it won't happen here" attitude
> > >> “Generation Y”
> > ⁰́₋Generation Y⁰́₊
> > "Generation Y"
> > >> listeners‟ evaluations listeners⁰́Ÿ
> > evaluations listeners' evaluations
> > >> high school – from high school ⁰́₃ from
> > high school –
> from
> > >> Co₀․₅Zn₀․₅Fe₂O₄
> > Co²́⁰⁰́Þ²́⁵Zn²́⁰⁰́Þ²́⁵Fe²́²O²́⁴
> > Co0.5Zn0.5Fe2O4?
> > >> μ Îơ
> > μ
> > >> Nafion® Nafion℗ʼ
> > Nafion®
> > >> Lévy
> > L©♭vy
> > Lévy
> > >> 43±13.20 years
> > 43℗ł13.20 years
> 43±13.20
> > years
> > >> 12.6 ± 7.05 ft∙lbs 12.6 ℗ł 7.05 ft⁸́₉lbs
> > 12.6 ± 7.05 ft•lbs
> > >> ‘Pouring on the Pounds' ⁰́₈Pouring on the Pounds'
> > 'Pouring on the Pounds'
> > >> k-ε turbulence k-Îæ
> > turbulence k-ε turbulence
> > >> student—neither parents student⁰́₄neither parents
> > student-neither parents
> > >> Λ = M – {p1, p2,…,pκ} Î₎ = M ⁰́₃ {p1,
> > p2,⁰́Œ,pÎð} ? (won’t save)
> > >> M = (0, δ)x × Y M = (0,
> > Îþ)x ©₇ Y ?
> > >> 100°
> 100℗ð
> > 100⁰
> > >> (α ≥16º) (Îł ⁹́Æ16℗ð)
> > (α>=16⁰)
> > >> naïve
> na©¯ve
> >
> > naïve
> > >>
> > >> To deal with this, we normally replace limited numbers of characters
> > in MarcEditor first and then do the compiling and transfer. For example:
> > replace ’ to ', “ to ", ” to " and ‟ to '. I am not sure about the right
> > and efficient way to solve this problem. I see that the XSLT stylesheet
> > specifies encoding="UTF-8". Is there a systematic way to make the
> > character transform and display right? Thank you for your suggestion and
> > feedback!
> > >>
> > >> Sophie
> > >>
> > >> -----Original Message-----
> > >> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
> > >> Of Tod Olson
> > >> Sent: Tuesday, April 17, 2012 10:13 PM
> > >> To: [log in to unmask]
> > >> Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] more on MARC char encoding: Now we're about
> > >> ISO_2709 and MARC21
> > >>
> > >> In practice it seems to mean UTF-8. At least I've only seen UTF-8, and
> > I can't imagine the code that processes this stuff being safe for UTF-16
> > or UTF-32. All of the offsets are byte-oriented, and there's too much
> > legacy code that makes assumption about null-terminated strings.
> > >>
> > >> -Tod
> > >>
> > >> On Apr 17, 2012, at 6:55 PM, Jonathan Rochkind wrote:
> > >>
> > >>> Okay, forget XML for a moment, let's just look at marc 'binary'.
> > >>>
> > >>> First, for Anglophone-centric MARC21.
> > >>>
> > >>> The LC docs don't actually say quite what I thought about leader byte
> > 09, used to advertise encoding:
> > >>>
> > >>>
> > >>> a - UCS/Unicode
> > >>> Character coding in the record makes use of characters from the
> > Universal Coded Character Set (UCS) (ISO 10646), or Unicode™, an industry
> > subset.
> > >>>
> > >>>
> > >>>
> > >>> That doesn't say UTF-8. It says UCS or "Unicode". What does that
> > actually mean? Does it mean UTF-8, or does it mean UTF-16 (closer to
> > what used to be called "UCS" I think?). Whatever it actually means, do
> > people violate it in the wild?
> > >>>
> > >>>
> > >>>
> > >>> Now we get to non-Anglophone centric marc. I think all of which is
> > ISO_2709? A standard which of course is not open access, so I can't get
> > it to see what it says.
> > >>>
> > >>> But leader 09 being used for encoding -- is that Marc21 specific, or
> > is it true of any ISO-2709? Marc8 and "unicode" being the only valid
> > encodings can't be true of any ISO-2709, right?
> > >>>
> > >>> Is there a generic ISO-2709 way to deal with this, or not so much?
> > >>
> > >
>
