=encoding UTF-8

=head1 NAME

MARC-Charset

=head1 INTRODUCTION

MARC::Charset is a package to assist you in converting converting data encoded
using MARC-8 character sets to Unicode (UTF-8).

The MARC format (MAchine Readable Cataloging) has been used since the early
1970s to encode bibliographic data. Since catalogers have used non-Latin
character sets for a long time, MARC had to grapple with the issue of encoding
non-ASCII data in an 8-bit environment from very early on; this became known
as the "MARC-8 Environment".

In 1992 the Unicode standard provided a a uniform encoding for all major
modern written languages. The MARC21 standard now supports encoding character
data in Unicode, specifically the UCS Transformation Formats-8 (UTF-8). UTF-8
has the advantage that it allows normal ASCII (8-bit) data to exist side by
side with the full repertoire of Unicode characters (16-bit).

Unicode notwithstanding, libraries still have a wealth of data encoded using
MARC-8. Yet, some new data formats such as XML require that characters are
encoded using Unicode. In order to fascilitate conversion the Library of
Congress graciously published character mappings to fascilitate the conversion
of MARC-8 data to Unicode.

MARC::Charset is basically an implementation of the character mappings that
the Library of Congress has published. For an overview of the MARC-8
environment and to see the MARC8/Unicode translation tables please visit
L<http://www.loc.gov/marc/specifications/speccharintro.html>.

=head1 INSTALLATION

To install this module type the following:

    perl Makefile.PL
    make
    make test
    make install

=head1 DEPENDENCIES

=over 4

=item * Perl 5.8.8

=item * Test::More

=item * XML::SAX

=item * Class::Accessor

=item * Unicode::Normalize

=back

You may also want to install MARC::Record to process MARC data, but you can
use MARC::Charset by itself if you like.

=head1 SUPPORT AND CONTRIBUTING

Please report bugs and request features through GitHub issues at
L<https://github.com/perl4lib/marc-perl/issues>, saying which distribution
they concern. Questions about using the modules are welcome there too. The
project website is L<https://perl4lib.github.io/marc-perl/>.

Contributions are very welcome; see
L<CONTRIBUTING.md|https://github.com/perl4lib/marc-perl/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md>
for how to run the tests and submit a pull request. To report a security
problem, please follow
L<SECURITY.md|https://github.com/perl4lib/marc-perl/blob/master/SECURITY.md>
rather than opening a public issue.

=head1 COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright (C) 2002 Ed Summers

This software is free software and may be distributed under the same
terms as Perl itself. See the F<LICENSE> file included with this
distribution.

=cut