Cataloging and Acquisitions
Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access Directorate of the Library of Congress
News
- 09/30/2025: Advisory: Possible Federal Government Shutdown. Library of Congress Fiscal Year 2025 appropriations will expire on Sept. 30, 2025, at midnight. If appropriations for Fiscal Year 2026 are not enacted by this time, the Library will be closed. Until the library reopens: Events will be canceled and rescheduled for a later date; email accounts and discussion lists ending in "loc.gov" will not be monitored; NACO and CONSER record distribution processes will continue without interruption; and Classification Web Plus and the PCC Directory will continue to function, but no support services will be available. For updates, please monitor the news or call the Library of Congress information line at (202) 707-5000.
- 09/18/2025: Beginning October 1, 2025, the Library of Congress will launch a phased rollout to expand non-Latin script input beyond the MARC-8 repertoire. The phased rollout will include both bibliographic and name authority records.
With the broad Unicode support that both BIBFRAME and FOLIO offer, new opportunities have emerged to enhance the discoverability of the Library of Congress’ non-Latin script collections. The Library’s Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access (ABA) Directorate has been actively developing best practices for non-Latin script input in bibliographic descriptions, with a greater emphasis on original scripts to enrich user access and experience.
To prepare for the addition of more scripts, the Library of Congress has been conducting technical updates and internal testing. The Library is also coordinating with OCLC to ensure that records distributed to OCLC and shared with members are correctly rendered in their original script. This work will continue for each new language as script expansion is rolled out, ensuring the results come out as expected.
As a part of this transition, the Library will discontinue the use of the 066 field in bibliographic records. The 066 field was important in the MARC-8 environment to indicate character sets in the MARC-8 environment. As the Library transitions to BIBFRAME and FOLIO, both of which are fully Unicode compliant, the 066 field is no longer needed.
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