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Hi. We are presently sketching out the plans for some online reference/ discographical works and are aware that there is no perfect solution or consistency amongst agreement :( In order to try and make things as user friendly yet accurate (with scope for expansion) I am looking for any views towards the following: 1. Presentation of artist names and groups. a. As these will have to go into one field rather than a "first name", "last name" or "group name" arrangement, do people still really use the "last name, first name" format that much when it comes to ONLINE searching? I am aware of its importance still in paper products and should there be any paper based developments I would hope we could computerise the reversal of names. b. Allowing for the fact that computers can strip out (for alphabet presentation) in listings "The" and such words, do people prefer it to the previous use of parenthesis. I.e. "The London Chorus" instead of "London Chorus (The)" and variants. c. Some discographies and catalogues have used a combination of capitals to show a family name whilst using the same format. This may be a European influence I cannot be sure. Does it prove to be off- putting to an American audience, i.e. "Hiram HOSIE" (as artist) and "HONEYMAN'S FIDDLERS (as group/artist). 2. Discographical indication of language a. We are considering the use of a field to indicate the language used within a recording. Is ISO 639-3 the right standard ? I am a bit confused here. We want to make it a standard lookup so that we could define Gaelic (GLA) or if possible differentiate Swedish as used in Sweden compared to Swedish as used in Finland (a different branch). Any linguists care to help here. From what I can see ISO 639-3 is the nearest. Many thanks for any thoughts. Best wishes, Darren ¦ D P Ingram ¦ Ab Ingram Oy ¦ ¦ darren at ingram.fi ¦ www.ingram.fi ¦ ¦ ¦ +358 6 781 0275 (FIN) ¦ +46 8 5511 4995 (SWE) ¦ +44 203 014 3839 (UK) ¦ ¦ extn 8001 ¦