KMLM List

["Bodfish,John" <bodfishj@xxxxxxxx>]

Silade:
 
In NCIP Bibliographic Codes are used to represent the language in
bibliographic metadata, and Terminology Codes are used to represent the
language of a person.
 
For example (per
http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/code_list.php) the
bibliographic code for the German language is "ger" and the
terminological code is "deu". A MARC-21 bibliographic record (per
http://www.loc.gov/marc/languages/language_code.html) will have "ger"
for language code. Rather than require translation between the coding in
a MARC record and an NCIP message, the NCIP committee decided to use the
bibliographic codes for bibliographic elements, and the terminological
code for user language elements.
 
FWIW, the reason for ISO 639 to have two code lists is (from
http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/faq.html#3
<http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/faq.html#3> ): 
"These alternative codes in ISO 639-2 exist for historical reasons. At
the time that ISO 639-2 was developed, there already was a well-known
and widely used language code list that had been used for over 30 years
in bibliographic systems which was largely adapted for the 3-character
code set . At the same time there was the 2-character code list (now
called ISO 639-1, previously ISO 639), which covered far fewer languages
than those for bibliographic applications. There was a desire by some
participants for the 3-character codes for languages that were already
in the 2-character list to generally share the same 2 characters. In 22
cases the existing bibliographic code was very different than the
2-character code (because it was based on a different form of the
language name), but the impact on existing bibliographic systems with
millions of records using those well-established codes would have been
enormous if a new 3-character code were adopted. Thus, these alternative
codes were used for those languages. The alternative codes should be
considered as synonyms; there is no overlap in codes between the B and
the T list."
 
The Library of Congress is the registrar of ISO 639-2, and the webpages
for it are http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/. You can download the
code lists from there.
 
John

________________________________

From: ncipinfo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ncipinfo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf
Of ??? 
Sent: Tuesday, July 13, 2010 2:40 AM
To: ncipinfo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; Robert Walsh
Subject: [ncipinfo] Language ,and User Language


Hello everyone:
Language use ISO 639-2 Alpha-3 Bibliographic Codes,but User Language use
the ISO 639-2 Terminological Codes.is there any difference between these
two elements.Why not  unite?

Silade