The current language codes for these languages are:

• Croatian: hrv
• Serbian: srp

However, a brief history of the codes for these languages may help in understanding codes found in older records. The original codes, during the time of the unified Yugoslavia, were scc for Croatian or Serbian written in the Cyrillic alphabet and scr for Croatian or Serbian written in the roman alphabet. At that time the languages were considered the same language, known as "Serbo-Croatian," and included the languages now known as Bosnian and Montenegrin. For additional information on the Bosnian language, see Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian Languages. For additional information on the Montenegrin language, see Montenegrin Language.

After Yugoslavia was split up into independent states in 1991, Croatian and Serbian were recognized as two separate languages. At that time the scr language code was used for Croatian and the scc code was used for Serbian.

In 2008 the current codes were assigned to these two languages. In 2009 OCLC programmatically changed existing records with the language code scr to hrv and those with scc to srp. While this programmatic change worked well for items cataloged after 1991, items cataloged earlier may have language codes that do not reflect the language of the item cataloged. For example, roman alphabet Serbian language items cataloged prior to the breakup of Yugoslavia would have had an scr language code, and this would have been programmatically changed to hrv, instead of the correct srp.

Since 1991, a distinction between the Cyrillic and roman scripts is made only for Serbian, and this is done in a 546 note. See: Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian Language.

Related Topics:

List of Language Codes