Diacritics in Millennium Cataloging
Under Construction
Notes from David
- LC Rule Interpretations -- Posted 2/22/2006
- There’s an LC rule interpretation change that I want to bring to everyone’s attention. In the past, we never included diacritics for capital letters in French, Spanish, and Portuguese. LC’s rule interpretation reads as follows:
- Note: Prior to January 2006 catalogers did not add a diacritic to initial capital letters in French, Spanish, and Portuguese. This exception no longer applies. With respect to capital letters appearing at the beginning of names or words, add diacritics according to the usage of the language. When in current cataloging a change is otherwise needed to an existing bibliographic or name authority record in these languages, catalogers are asked to add the diacritic at the same time. With respect to acronyms, initialisms (including single capital letters used in names), do not systematically add the accent. Instead:
1) for purposes of transcription, follow the usage as found in the data;
2) for purposes of establishing the authorized form of a corporate name, follow the usage as found on the body's own publications. - I would suggest that we not take the time to change existing bibliographic records, since indexing is not affected. You will, however, start to see the changes appear in new cataloging. Let me know if you’d like more details.