All these flavors of MARC use ISO 639-2/B (and have for many years). There
are also some applications that have chosen to use it not strictly in the
library community. One example is the RLG Cultural Materials Alliance. I
know I have come across others.

In MODS we need to allow for both at the element level. One additional
reason is that the MARC Advisory Committee has discussed the idea of a
"context marker" used at the element level to designate (among other
things) language and script. Certainly if incorporated into MARC (and
there was much support for it) the language code would be a MARC (639-2)
one. So we need to allow for both to remain compatible with MARC and not
force people to do conversions. We plan to add both xml:lang and lang
(defined as ISO 639-2/B) at the element level. That way people who want to
ignore xml:lang can and vice versa. Some may even want to use both.

Rebecca

On Wed, 18 Dec 2002, Karen Coyle wrote:

> At 12:19 PM 12/18/2002 +0100, you wrote:
> >- As RFC3066 is widely used around the world - and more, widely understand -
> >i think that the spread of MODS (in and beyond the librarian community) will
> >be easier and better if MODS use RFC3066.
>
> Yves and others -- do you know what language list is used by other
> "flavors" of MARC? UNIMARC? UKMARC? NORMARC? FINMARC?
>
>
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