BCC2003/SMF/3

MARBI / MARC Advisory Committee

ALA Annual Conference, Toronto, Canada, June 21, 2003

Reported by Paul Cauthen, Chair, Subcommittee on MARC Formats

MARBI and the MARC Advisory Committee met concurrently in one session during the ALA Annual meeting in Toronto. Chair Thomas Saudargas (CCLA) led the session.

Summary
This year’s meeting was occupied primarily with finishing up work from previously-considered proposals. The only proposal of significance to the music library community was the introduction of a field to record standard identifiers in the authority format (2003-04).

Proposal 2003-04: Definition of Field 024 (Other Standard Identifier) to the MARC 21 Authority Format (Approved)
Subcommittee TC 46/SC 9 of the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) have been developing standards for the identification and description of a variety of information resources using alphanumeric codes, including music: ISWC (International Standard Musical Work Code). Although there was some concern expressed among the Committee that the introduction of work and or expression-level (in FBR terms) codes might be prematurely pushing the authority format in a new direction and raising some cataloging policy issues in terms of the burden of recording the numbers, the Committee was assured there was no such intent or obligation; the field merely provides a linking point in the record.

Proposal 2002-14/9R: Definition of Fields 365 (Trade Price) and 366 (Trade Information) in the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format (Approved as amended)
The proposal completed the harmonization of UK-MARC and MARC21. Although used extensively by the publishing industry in Great Britain, little use is anticipated in North America.

Proposal 2003-03: Definition of Data Elements for Article Level Description (Option 1 approved)
Increasing numbers of agencies are using MARC21 to transmit article citation data. This proposal adds a single new subfield ($g) to field 773 (Host item entry) to record that data using an existing standard (SICI).

Proposal 2003-05: Changes to Field 352 (Digital Graphic Representation) in the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format (Option 1 approved)
This proposal adds a new subfield ($q) to record the format in which the digital image is stored, necessitated by a recent change in AACR2.

Discussion Paper 2003-DP04: Defining subfield $2 in fields 155, 455 and 555 of the MARC 21 Authority Format
This paper described situations in which it would be useful to attach the code defining the thesaurus from which an individual record entry was derived to the entry. Committee discussion determined that all the necessary information is already accommodated in existing coding in the authority format and that resolution of the problems described in the paper was a systems, not MARC format issue.

Report from the Library of Congress: Sally McCallum
The migration of LC’s catalog records to Unicode has been delayed until 2004.

Report from the JSC Format Variation Working Group: Jennifer Bowen
The group is investigating principles for the creation of FRBR expression-level headings by adding elements to headings for works. They have been deconstructing the GMD, intending to determine how the mode of expression might be encoded in a discrete place. And the group has also been monitoring specific FRBR implementations through a series of system vendor liaisons.

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Last updated August 5, 2003