Yes, this causes me concern as well. I do agree that it's the right thing to resolve the Serbian/Croatian issue. But, it's one thing to change a relatively small number of records (190,000) involving language codes that a small group of our users would know well; it would be quite another to think about fre/fra (almost 6 million records) and chi/zho (2.2 million records). Both of those language codes are on the tips of catalogers' fingers and both of the codes are among the top 10 languages represented in WorldCat. French is #3 and Chinese is #9.
--Glenn
-----Original Message-----
From: ISO 639 Joint Advisory Committee [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Rebecca S. Guenther
Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2008 1:37 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [ISOJAC] Request from Serbia to change bibliographic language codes in ISO 639-2 (fwd)
This is why we have to be VERY careful about changing these 639-2/B codes. There is no way that we would consider changing all 22 of them.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 17:30:24 +0200
From: "[iso-8859-1] Lang Gérard" <[log in to unmask]>
To: Rebecca S. Guenther <[log in to unmask]>
Cc: "[iso-8859-1] Lang Gérard" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: RE: Request from Serbia to change bibliographic language codes in
ISO 639-2
Dear Rebecca,
Thank you very much for this information.
Are you also intending to investigate the possibility to change the ISO 639-2 bibliographic code for French ("fre") to ("fra") that is the ISO 639-2/t and ISO 639-3 code element ? And, more generally to reduce the numùber of divergences between ISO 639-2/B and T code elements ?
Bien cordialement.
Gérard LANG
-----Message d'origine-----
De : Rebecca S. Guenther [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Envoyé : jeudi 29 mai 2008 15:24 À : Pelaprat Cc : Mr. Håvard Hjulstad_Chairman of TC 37; [log in to unmask]; Bryden Alan; Weissinger Reinhard; Lang Gérard Objet : Re: Request from Serbia to change bibliographic language codes in ISO 639-2
The Library of Congress is currently investigating the impact of changing the ISO 639-2 bibliographic codes for Serbian and Croatian on our large bibliographic databases. We did get the formal request for this change.
We will be discussing this with the ISO 639 Joint Advisory Committee shortly and hope to send a response soon.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^ Rebecca S. Guenther ^^
^^ Chair, ISO 639-2 Maintenance Agency ^^
^^ Senior Networking and Standards Specialist ^^
^^ Library of Congress ^^
^^ Washington, DC 20540-4402 ^^
^^ (202) 707-5092 (voice) (202) 707-0115 (FAX) ^^
^^ [log in to unmask] ^^
^^ ^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
On Thu, 29 May 2008, Pelaprat wrote:
> Dear Håvard,
>
> Mr. Bryden received the attached official request from the National
> Libraries in Serbia during his visit to Serbia last week. Mr. Ugricic,
> Director on the National Library of Serbia, requests that the
> bibliographic language codes for Serbian and Croatian languages as
> specified in ISO 639-2 be aligned with those used for terminological
> purposes. Please would you follow up on this request and inform Mr.
> Ugricic (business card attached) as well as ourselves of any decision taken.
>
> Many thanks for your help in this matter.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Mary Lou
>
> -------------------------------------------------
> Dr. Mary Lou Pelaprat
> Technical Programme Manager/Editor/
> Secretary of ISO 3166/MA
> Standards Department
> ISO Central Secretariat
> 1, chemin de la Voie Creuse
> P.O. Box 56
> CH-1211 Geneva 20
>
> Tel. +41 22 749 01 11
> Direct line +41 22 749 73 66
> Fax +41 22 749 73 49
> E-mail <mailto:[log in to unmask]> [log in to unmask] Web
> <blocked::http://www.iso.org/> www.iso.org
> -------------------------------------------------
>
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