BCC2002/SMF/4

MARC Formats Subcommittee

2002 Annual Report

Members: Paul Cauthen (Chair), James Alberts, Janet Bochin, Grace Fitzgerald, Paul Frank (LC Representative), Mark Scharff, Lois Schultz, Robert Sherrane, Jay Weitz (OCLC Representative)

As the MLA representative, Kathy Glennan attended the MARBI/MARC Advisory Committee meetings during the ALA Midwinter meeting in January. There was a discussion of issues related to the future of coding items in electronic formats (007 field), including the fact that, in certain areas, we are running out of codes. There was also preliminary discussion of the items listed below as approved.

As the MLA representative, Paul Cauthen attended the MARBI/MARC Advisory Committee meetings during the ALA Annual meeting in June. MARBI approved new codes for the sound recordings materials field (007) to assist in the identification of items with preservation needs, and approved the music-related items requested to facilitate the merger of the UKMARC format with MARC21. MARBI also met jointly with CC:DA to begin consideration of IFLA’s FRBR document.

At the Subcommittee's joint open meeting in Las Vegas with the Descriptive Cataloging Subcommittee, Kathy summarized MARBI actions of particular interest to MLA and co-moderated an open question-and-answer session with Nancy Lorimer.

Most noteworthy among the other issues considered by the Subcommittee in the past year is the preliminary consideration of a proposal from IAML and the RISM Central Office to add the capability to encode incipit information in MARC records. The Subcommittee expects to continue to work with these groups to investigate the preparation of an official proposal to MARBI.

Submitted by Paul Cauthen

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Last updated November 12, 2002