At 8:24 PM -0500 07-29-1997, John Dasher wrote:
>As Rebecca pointed out, the MARC format does have the capability for
>indicating dates with era notation. MARC happens to use "c" for B.C., "d"
>for A.D., so 221 B.C. is c0221 and 960 A.D. is d0960. A description can be
>found at: http://www.loc.gov/marc/bibliographic/ecbdnumb.html#mrcb045
>
>Additionally, the Z39.50 Implementors Group have proposed their own method
>which may be viewed at: http://lcweb.loc.gov/z3950/agency/copen/date.html.
>
>In summary, if we augment ISO 8601 by supporting unlimited digits for the
>year along with MARC's era notation, I think we have a solution that should
>work for everyone. Thoughts?
I personally prefer the Z39.50 implementation, for a number of reasons.
First of all, it's much more intuitive to write out -5000 when you're
thinking of an even 5000 BC. The MARC's use of "c" for BC and "d" AD seems
to me a little strange, considering that it ignores the more date-minded
aspects of the two initialisms. Since the C stands for "Christ" and the D
stands for Domini (sp?), which means something along the lines of "of our
Lord", it makes me wonder whether bible-thumpers were at all involved in
the development of the standard. ;-) Considering that some people who
aren't as enthusiastic about the savior choose to use BCE and CE to
indicate periods before and after (respectively) 1 AD instead of the
Christian-based standard. Why not abandon human silliness once and for all
and look at time as it really is--numbers. As such, the Z39.50
implementation has my vote.
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[ Jordan Reiter ]
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[ "You can't just say, 'I don't want to get involved.' ]
[ The universe got you involved." --Hal Lipset, P.I. ]
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