For institutions with multi-lingual collections, the out-of-the-box Language field can be a useful addition to the record display. When Language is added to the Full Record display, the "Language codes Labels" code table is used to convert the abbreviated codes used in metadata records into generally understood language names–e.g. the code 'gle' displays as 'Irish'.

When the Language field is added to the Brief Record display, however, the labels are NOT used and the code is displayed as-is. Ex Libris recognizes this as a defect (case #06659538) but a solution is not part of the current development work plan. We are dismayed, as we hoped to add this field to our brief record display to remedy student difficulties demonstrated during usability interviews. The Language field is included in our Full Record display, but it is less visible there than it would be in the Brief Record.

Scenarios where having the language label in the Brief display would be helpful for users:

1. Students can have trouble distinguishing which titles are foreign language material because the metadata is primarily or solely in English. This sort of confusion can lead to item requests for material that a student cannot read and thus cannot use, which wastes the time of the student during their research, wastes the time of library staff who processed the request, and sometimes costs the library money for postage/fees incurred to process the request. For online resources, this confusion leads to inflated usage statistics that can be misleading for calculating cost per use and making renewal decisions. Image: eng metadata jpn contents

2. Titles can be in a different language than the contents of the text while the record metadata is in a third language. Numerous older titles, for example, are in Latin, which can be misleading about the linguistic nature of their contents. This confusion has similar impacts as described in the first scenario. Image: eng metadata latin title irish text

3. The Language facet is not sufficient to distinguish the primary language of the material from the presence of supplemental text in that language, like subtitles on a film. Patrons who are seeking resources in specific languages can be frustrated by this. For example, the film Parasite remains in search results after the English language filter is applied, even though the dialogue is in Korean and French while English is only present as subtitles. In those same filtered results, you can see the film Transfer, which is in German and French. Image: eng filter koreanFrench dialogue

Since the code is displayed in the Brief Record, we cannot add it for our users–it would cause more confusion than it would resolve. The out-of-the-box Language field needs to be fixed so the "Language codes Labels" code table is invoked for the Brief Record, as it is for the Full Record.