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With the recent Unicode implementation, we had a minor earthquake of name authority records and subject authority proposals that either continued to use subsitutes for the correct diacritics, or new unauthorized diacritics. Members have been very good at using the correct diacritics when reminded.

We continue to receive aftershocks, however, particularly with members using the superscript zero instead of the degree symbol when inputting geographic coordinates in name authority records and in subject proposals.

For name authority records, this results in error messages and failures to contribute to the databases.

For subject authority records,this results in considerable delays in processing subject authority records, as we have had to adopt the practice of manually checking and re-keying degree signs in each subject proposal that contains them. Please, when contributing name authority records, remeber to use the correct diacritic for a degree sign. When inputting a subject proposal through the web form, follow the instructions in the drop down menu that accompanies the form.

Anthony R.D. Franks
Team Leader, Cooperative Cataloging Team
Library of Congress
202-707-2822 (voice)
202-252-2082 (fax)