Nonfiling characters are a good discussion point. MARC tells you how many characters to ignore, MODS splits up the field into nonsorting and sorting parts. Another option is to repeat the field as a sort version.  I'm not sure what works best in RDF, if anything.  

Subject sorting is another animal entirely. I can imagine that you'd want subject temporals to be sorted as you suggest, andthen other subjects might be better sorted according to the type of subjects they are. Names and title subjects might need nonsorting treatment, Hierarchical geographic subjects might best be sorted by location, not alphabetically. There be dragons, unless the data is well controlled.

The best Bibframe can do is to support the display system by offering the ability to encoding nonsorting characters somehow, but it's up to the catalogers to get the data in and systems to display it according to user requirements.  As you note, machine calculation of nonsorting characters is difficult and fraught with peril.

Nate
============================
Nate Trail
Network Development & MARC Standards Office
LS/TECH/NDMSO
Library of Congress

________________________________________
From: Bibliographic Framework Transition Initiative Forum [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of J. McRee Elrod [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Sunday, February 10, 2013 8:36 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [BIBFRAME] Filing indicators

I've noticed no discussion on Bibframe of filing indicators, nor
indication of such in posted examples.  Did I miss it?

There was a recent discussion on another list of titles which should
file under what appears to be an initial article, e.g, "A is for ...".

How will this be handled in Bibframe?  Initial articles differ between
languages, as well as "A", "An" and "The" being occasionally the word
by which to file.   Programming to recognize this would be very
complex.  I have seen no discussion concerning indication of language
in Bibframe, on which to base such programming.

Are we to no longer have alphabetical browse lists, only web style
searching?  I would miss alphabetical browse lists apart from subject
searches, which I prefer to have in inverse chronological order.  That
too would be more difficult to program based on imprint date in the
absence of a date fixed field.  The imprint date may even be lacking,
if that CONSER provision is carried over.


   __       __   J. McRee (Mac) Elrod ([log in to unmask])
  {__  |   /     Special Libraries Cataloguing   HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/
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