How to use the pymarc.marc8.marc8_to_unicode function in pymarc

def get(self, key, *args):
        value = dict.get(self, key, *args)
        if not value:
            return ''
        if hasattr(value, '__iter__'):
            value = '|'.join([x for x in value if x])
        # converting to utf8 with yaz-marcdump instead -- it handles
        # oddities better
        return pymarc.marc8.marc8_to_unicode(value).encode('utf8')
        # convert to unicode if value is a string
        #if type(value) == type(''):
        #    value = unicode(value, 'utf8')
        # converting to NFC form lessens character encoding issues 
        value = unicodedata.normalize('NFC', value)
        return value.encode('utf8')

def map_marc8_field(f):
    """Map MARC8 field."""
    if f.is_control_field():
        f.data = marc8_to_unicode(f.data)
    else:
        f.subfields = map(marc8_to_unicode, f.subfields)
    return f

def map_marc8_field(f):
    """Map MARC8 field."""
    if f.is_control_field():
        f.data = marc8_to_unicode(f.data)
    else:
        f.subfields = map(marc8_to_unicode, f.subfields)
    return f

for subfield in subs[1:]:
                    skip_bytes = 1
                    if len(subfield) == 0:
                        continue
                    try:
                        code = subfield[0:1].decode("ascii")
                    except UnicodeDecodeError:
                        warnings.warn(BadSubfieldCodeWarning())
                        code, skip_bytes = normalize_subfield_code(subfield)
                    data = subfield[skip_bytes:]

                    if to_unicode:
                        if self.leader[9] == "a" or force_utf8:
                            data = data.decode("utf-8", utf8_handling)
                        elif encoding == "iso8859-1":
                            data = marc8_to_unicode(data, hide_utf8_warnings)
                        else:
                            data = data.decode(encoding)
                    subfields.append(code)
                    subfields.append(data)
                if to_unicode:
                    field = Field(
                        tag=entry_tag,
                        indicators=[first_indicator, second_indicator],
                        subfields=subfields,
                    )
                else:
                    field = RawField(
                        tag=entry_tag,
                        indicators=[first_indicator, second_indicator],
                        subfields=subfields,
                    )