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Dear PCCLIST readers,

 

I was asked about a similar case last year. My correspondent called the vertical bar symbol a "pipe".   More on terminology here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_bar

 

For NACO purposes, documentation on normalization is found here https://www.loc.gov/aba/pcc/naco/normrule-2.html

 

In which the following table is included as Appendix A:

 

Other Special Characters

Character

Character

Comments

Music flat sign

Retain

 

Number sign

Retain

 

Slash

Blank

 

Reverse slash

Blank

 

Commercial at sign

Retain

 

Ampersand

Retain

 

Asterisk

Blank

 

Vertical bar (fill)

Blank

 

Accordingly, a heading for the body with name S|2 would normalize to S 2. That is, S blank 2.  However, normalization instructions don't equate to substitution, and I don't see any instructions to substitute a slash for the vertical bar.  Furthermore, if that were the case, another question is whether you would simply type a blank or enter a code to provide a non-spacing blank, which would be needed (more on that here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-breaking_space). Obviously, it presents a problem in interpretation if presentation results in the S being on one line of a display and the 2 on the next line.

 

You can enter a vertical bar by holding down the Alt key and typing 124 - that gives you the ASCII value, according to the section "In common character maps" in the Wikipedia article: which has a range of values.  I don't see that any such values are acceptable for NACO/Connexion work, however.  We seem to be stuck with using ALA characters.  More on the adoption of ALA characters and related issues is here http://www.oclc.org/support/help/olib/909/Content/Data%20Exchange/About%20Character%20Sets.htm

 

Sincerely - Ian

 

Ian Fairclough

Cataloging and Metadata Services Librarian

George Mason University

703-993-2938

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