• Article Type: General
• Product: Aleph
• Product Version: 18.01

Description:
Headings beginning with diacritics don't file properly. (They file after "zzz...".)

Resolution:
The misfiling of headings beginning with diacritics can be due to a non-filing indicator value of "1" for the field in the bib record. Before unicode, when the diacritic mark was a separate character ("decomposed"), such a non-filing value was required. Now, with unicode, where the diacritic mark and the character it modifies are represented by a single unicode character ("composed"), the non-filing indicator should have a value of "0".

{The same thing can happen in cases of a second letter (such as "L'?tat...") where a non-filing indicator of "3" should now be "2"; "Los ?ltimos", where "5" should now be "4"; etc.}

The LC document "Change in Practice for Counting Non-Filing Characters in MARC 21" at http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/nonfil.pdf describes the change. ALEPH requires the "New practice" in order to file these fields correctly.

US PRB 9647 talks about various tools for changing indicators. If you had a set of records which needed to have the second indicator changed from 3 to 2, you could use this. We are investigating how to locate records with diacritics which might require change.

Note: If you are exporting records to a site which is using the "Old practice", that could be a problem. You might need to use the preceding, in reverse, to change them back.

• Article last edited: 10/8/2013