On Wed, 30 Jul 1997, Jordan Reiter wrote:
> 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
..
> 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
...
Haven't we had this discussion on the meta2 list before? Dates are not a
simple linear sequence with a 0 1,997 years ago. There have been changes
in the calendar system, which means that the Russian October Revolution
is now celebrated in November. As Paul Miller pointed out some time ago,
the archeologists use a different system for dates millions of years
in the past.
To me it sounds sensible to have a mechanism for encoding the date system
- e.g. so that Star Trek fans can encode Star Date times.
Brian
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Brian Kelly, UK Web Focus
UKOLN, University of Bath, BATH, England, BA2 7AY
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