In MARC 21 records, Leader character position 9 (Character coding scheme) must indicate whether the record uses MARC-8 encoding or Unicode encoding.  This is necessary processing information because any character other than an ASCII graphic or control character -- i.e., any character whose code point is greater than 7F(hex) -- is represented by different code points in the two encoding schemes.  It is not permitted to use both encoding schemes in the same MARC 21 record.

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Part 1:  General Character Set Issues

Character Sets and Encoding Options