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Page Properties


Document status

Status
colourGreen
titleAPPROVED
  

Area coveredCataloging
Prepared byCataloging Task Force
Adapted fromOrbis Cascade Alliance Collaborative Technical Services Team


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Numeric Character References (or, NCRs) are common markup constructs used in markup languages like HTML and XML, where a sequence of characters will be rendered as a single character. NCRs are structured as ampersand ( & ), pound sign ( # ), lowercase letter x, four-position Unicode character code, and a trailing semicolon ( ; ). For example, च . This policy is about the use of NCRs in MARC cataloging records in OCLC (and hence Alma).

Policy Statement

Catalogers most often use NCRs in the context of non-Latin scripts. Catalogers may supply parallel non-Latin fields only for scripts supported by OCLC.

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These are:

  • MARC-8 scripts (subsets of UTF-8 characters, so they are also compatible with UTF-8 Unicode): Arabic, CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean), Cyrillic (within the MARC-8 character set), Greek, or Hebrew scripts.

  • UTF-8 Unicode only scripts: Armenian, Bengali, Cyrillic (outside the MARC-8 character set), Devanagari, Ethiopic, Syriac, Tamil, or Thai scripts. These scripts are not included in MARC-8.

Notice that Cyrillic is the one script that straddles both categories. In general, modern Slavic languages using Cyrillic (like Russian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian) are within MARC-8, and Old Church Slavic and non-Slavic languages using Cyrillic (like Kazakh, Uzbek and Mongolian) use additional Unicode characters.


If any non-MARC-8 scripts are exported in MARC-8 data format, the non-MARC-8 characters are saved in Numeric Character Reference (NCR) format (see  Numeric Character Reference for more information). However, all All settings for Alma should be UTF-8 Unicode. NCRs should NOT be used to create non-Latin scripts for scripts not supported by OCLC. Examples include Georgian, Khmer, and anything else not listed above. Non-Latin fields using NCRs to render non-supported scripts should be deleted from OCLC master records when cataloging.

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However, some scripts/characters that were not supported in the past are supported by OCLC now, so non-Latin fields using NCRs in those cases will need to be upgraded.

Old record using NCRs should be upgraded when used for cataloging (Mongolian example):

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Upgraded record using newly supported characters (Kazakh example):

Image Removed

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Exceptions to this policy may be made in the case of large record sets provided by vendors, but CSU Libraries must make a commitment to using the available records that most closely adhere to this policy in such cases. See OCLC Connexion Client guide International Cataloging: Use Non-Latin Scripts  for more details. 

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