[Wactclc-alma] Encoding Format

[Guidry, Wade]

Lynn,

It's ok to use the ISO8859_1 format for import. As long as the characters are translated and appear correctly into Alma, you're good.


Alma is going to store the data in UTF-8 regardless.

Alma just needs to know the character encoding of the incoming data so that it can interpret the data correctly, before storing in UTF-8.

(If the characters don't appear correctly, as you experienced when you set your import profile to UTF-8, that's a clue that your character encoding selection is incorrect.)


[Title: Big Bend Community College Logo]

Wade Guidry
Library Consortium Services Manager
Big Bend Community College
wadeg at bigbend.edu<mailto:wadeg at bigbend.edu>

509.760.4474
www.bigbend.edu<http://www.bigbend.edu>

Big Bend Community College * 7662 Chanute Street NE * Moses Lake, WA 98837-3299



From: Wactclc-alma [mailto:wactclc-alma-bounces at lists.ctc.edu] On Behalf Of Lynn Robinson
Sent: Thursday, July 13, 2017 9:44 AM
To: wactclc-alma at lists.ctc.edu
Subject: [Wactclc-alma] Encoding Format

Hello All,

Before we migrated to Alma, we were using Voyager and I used the UTF-8 encoding format to import bib records. I set up my Alma import profile with UTF-8 but the symbols and accent marks in the bib records are replaced by white question marks inside black triangles. When I change my import profile to use ISO8859_1, all the diacritics show correctly. I retrieve my records from OCLC CatExpress via a browser and OCLC says that I cannot get the UTF-8 records to export correctly unless I use CatExpress via the client.

So, my understanding is that the UTF-8 is the newer standard which is capable of reading more characters and the ISO8859_1 is outdated and out of favor. I did not want to use CatExpress via the client unless I must. I'm not sure of the implications of using the old encoding format. Should I do whatever it takes to use UTF-8?

Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated.

Thank you,
Lynn

Lynn Robinson
Acquisitions & Cataloging | Library
Bellingham Technical College
360-752-8337
www.btc.edu<http://www.btc.edu>



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ctc.edu/pipermail/wactclc-alma_lists.ctc.edu/attachments/20170713/c7b67dc2/attachment-0002.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image003.png
Type: image/png
Size: 12948 bytes
Desc: image003.png
URL: <http://lists.ctc.edu/pipermail/wactclc-alma_lists.ctc.edu/attachments/20170713/c7b67dc2/attachment-0002.png>