BCC2002/SMF/2 MLA 2002 Report
BCC2002/SMF/2
Subcommittee on MARC Formats
Report from the 2002 Las Vegas Conference
The Subcommittee on MARC Formats held a joint open meeting with the
Subcommittee on Descriptive Cataloging during the Las Vegas conference. This report addresses the MARC-related aspects of
that joint meeting.
Kathy Glennan highlighted discussion papers and proposals from the
past two MARBI meetings held during the ALA conferences. She reported on the impending change to the recording of languages
in field 041. Starting in late April 2002, the practice of “stacking” language codes will become obsolete.
Instead, multiple languages belonging in a particular subfield will have a repeated subfield code. For example:
old 041 0 ‡d fre ‡e freeng ‡h fre ‡g freengger ‡h fre
new 041 0 ‡d fre ‡e fre ‡e eng ‡h fre ‡g fre ‡g eng ‡g ger ‡h fre
Additional MARC 21 changes coming in April include making field 508
repeatable, and the addition of a new 007/04 code for DVDs.
Kathy also addressed changes coming to MARC 21 in the next year. In
September, expect the ability to encode “integrating resources” separately from “serials” in the
Leader/07 (Bibliographic Level) and the option of repeatable 260 fields for resources that change publication information
over time. By next spring, anticipate the opportunity to encode a URL in subfield ‡u in Authorities field 670, and the
extension of Bibliographic field 600-651 2nd indicator values to field 655.
The Library of Congress asked for MLA’s comments on the revision of
MARBI Proposal 2001-10R, “Definition of Additional Codes in Field 007/10 for Sound Recordings in the MARC 21
Bibliographic and Holdings Formats” which will be considered at ALA Annual in Atlanta. Kathy presented the suggested
redefinition and expansion to the codes available for this byte. Sound recording preservationists desire additional
definitions to better encode the physical material used in the manufacture of different types of recordings.
The final highlights of MARBI discussions included longer-term
considerations which will continue to evolve:
- Authority records for headings which arise from different cataloging codes (previously referred to as
“Multilingual authority records” in MARBI Discussion Paper 2001-DP05)
- The possibility of renaming field 008 for consistency throughout the bibliographic and holdings formats (MARBI
Discussion Paper 2002-DP02)
- The use of non-filing control characters in addition to the current non-filing indicator technique (MARBI preferred a
more limited approach than suggested in Discussion Paper 2002-DP05)
- Possible changes relating to the fixed fields for music scores arising from format harmonization with UKMARC (MARBI
Discussion Paper 2002-DP07, section 2.1)
- Consideration of adding fields 260 and 300 to the MARC 21 Holdings Format (Discussion Paper 2002-DP04). MARBI found
this discussion premature and decided to wait for final recommendations from the JSC’s Working Group on Format Variations.
Their interim report is available at:
http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/jsc/current.html#ForVarWG
Revised handouts from the Open Meeting will soon be available on
the Subcommittee’s website and in the Music Cataloging Bulletin. For more information about the Subcommittee, its
activities and the semi-annual MARBI reports, please visit our website available at
http://www.musiclibraryassoc.org/BCC/MARC/MARC.html. We
welcome comments on MARC format-related issues at any time.
Submitted by Kathy Glennan
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Last updated July 30, 2002