Let me get back to you on some of the detail stuff when I get a chance,
but on this:

On Wednesday, July 30, 2003, at 10:44 AM, Karen Coyle wrote:

> If you have a citation that looks like:
>
> Kleist, Peter. G.P.U. Justice . Edited by Maurice Edelman. London,
> 1938.
>
> (This is a real citation, btw)... how would you want the date to be
> coded? Do you want to assume that this is a firm date? Think of writing
> the algorithm that would transfer a variety of citations into MODS
> format.

First point is that I have no illusions of how difficult writing an
algorithm to translate written citations into MODS would be. I am more
thinking about MARC --> MODS conversion, and creation of new records.

But on the above, I would understand it as a firm date. In citations,
one always assumes the date (or name, for that matter) is firm unless
it's qualified with some other indicator. I would assume the same for
MODS.

Bruce