[Metadatalibrarians] Language coding in library catalogs

[Riley, Charles]

Hi all,

The Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) is pleased to announce the release of its guidelines for coding language information in bibliographic and authority records using the ISO 639-3 vocabulary. ISO 639-3 is a comprehensive list of nearly 8,000 three-letter codes for individual languages that expands on ISO 639-2. ISO 639-2 includes the same languages as the MARC language codes. Using ISO 639-3 to encode language information in bibliographic and authority records will allow us to provide users with more accurate and granular language information. In particular, ISO 639-3 will enable better access to many indigenous languages, sign languages, historical languages and artificial languages. It also provides better identification of spoken or sung languages in records for audiovisual materials in some languages, such as Chinese and Arabic.

The guidelines are available at https://www.loc.gov/aba/pcc/scs/documents/ISO-639-3-guidelines.pdf.

These guidelines are based on feedback from user testing. We welcome further feedback as catalogers gain experience with using the ISO 639-3 language codes.

Best,
Charles Riley
on behalf of the PCC Task Group on Developing Guidelines for Using ISO 639-3 Language Codes for Library Cataloging


Charles L. Riley
Catalog Librarian for African Languages
Yale University Library

charles.riley at yale.edu
(203)432-7566
344 Winchester Ave., Cube B140DY
New Haven, CT  06511
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8177-3149
http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/no2016138954
https://www.viaf.org/viaf/119147904994779090104/#Riley,_Charles,_1972-
https://isni.org/isni/0000000497690465