Library of Congress

MDS Technical Notice

March 13, 2001

Converted Pinyin Bibliographic Records

Distributed via MDS-Books


Approximately 27,000 converted pinyin bibliographic records will appear in the current issue (volume 29, issue 11) and subsequent issues of MDS-Books All and the MDS-Books All Daily files. These converted pinyin records contain romanized data only and do not include any vernacular data.

The files contain a large number of older records, "Brief JACKPHY" and minimal level cataloging records (encoding level equal to '7'). As a result of the pinyin conversion project the content data has been romanized to reflect the pinyin transliteration scheme, but no concerted effort was made to fully review or upgrade the MARC content of these records to reflect current cataloging standards. Therefore subscribers may encounter converted older records that contain obsolete or MARC21 error conditions.

All converted bibliographic records contain a 987 field indicating the conversion status of each record. For more detail about the pinyin project see previous CDS notices or the pinyin webpage, http://www.loc.gov/catdir/pinyin/pinyin.html.

Concerns or questions regarding specific data within the converted pinyin bibliographic records can be directed to:

Phil Melzer
Regional and Cooperative Cataloging Division/LC
email: pmel@loc.gov
telephone: (202) 707-7961

March 13, 2000