BCC2004/SMF/1

MARBI / MARC Advisory Committee
ALA Midwinter Conference, San Diego, CA, January 10-11, 2004

Reported by Paul Cauthen, Chair, Subcommittee on MARC Formats

MARBI and the MARC Advisory Committee met concurrently in two sessions during the ALA Annual Meeting in Toronto. The Chair, Thomas Saudargas (CCLA), led the sessions.

Discussion Papers

2004-DP01: Changes Needed to Accommodate RISM Data--Music Incipits

Music librarians have often wished for the capability to record music incipits in catalog records, as the incipit is sometimes the only reliable method of uniquely identifying a musical work. The opportunity to incorporate this capability into the MARC format was presented by RISM, who approached the bodies responsible for the three major bibliographic formats: MARC21, Unimarc and MAB (Germany), with proposals to add a field for the music incipit. The MARC21 request to MARBI was prepared and presented by the MLA liaison to MARBI, Paul Cauthen, in the form of a discussion paper.

As presented, the paper defines field 031 (with 19 subfields!) to be added to the bibliographic and authority formats. Field 031 closely parallels a similar field added by Unimarc in 2003. The musical notation portion of the field can be encoded in one of two alpha-numeric schemes: Plaine and Easie Code (used by RISM) or DARMS (used by German cataloging agencies). Other subfields can be used to record the caption or heading, voice or instrument, role, key or mode, clef, key signature, time signature, and text incipit.

The discussion paper was generally well-received and is scheduled to return with minor modifications as a proposal at the MARBI meeting at ALA Annual in June 2004.

2004-DP02: Applying Field 752 (Added Entry -- Hierarchical Place Name) for Different Purposes in the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format

This paper suggests the need of some institutions to index the different uses of this field differently, and presents a possible way to facilitate such capability by either adding an indicator to show whether the place name designates place of publication or subject or defining a new field in the subject range for subject use.

2004-DP03: Changing the Mapping for the Double-Wide Diacritics from MARC8 to Unicode/UCS and from the Unicode/UCS Half Diacritic Characters to the Unicode/UCS Double-Wide Diacritic Characters

This paper gives a number of reasons why the use of the single double-wide diacritics may be preferable to using the two half diacritic characters, and suggests that the MARC 21 community change the official encoding in Unicode/UCS to the double-wide diacritics.

Proposals

2004-01: Making Subfields $e, $f, and $g Repeatable in Field 260 of the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format (approved as presented)

Recording multiple places, names, and dates of manufacture in field 260 is sometimes needed in rare book cataloging. Since subfields $e (Place of manufacture), $f (Manufacturer) and $g (Date of manufacture) are currently not repeatable in field 260, catalogers must either decide to record only one set of manufacture information or give the information in a note.

2004-02: Defining New Field Link Type Codes for Subfield $8 (Field link and sequence number) in the MARC 21 Bibliographic and Holdings Formats (approved as amended)

The proposal defines new link type codes “a” (action) and “x” (general sequencing) in subfield $8. This will facilitate linking between field 583 (Action note) and specific note fields 541 (Immediate Source of Acquisition Note) and 561 (Ownership and Custodial History).

2004-03: Designating the Privacy of Fields 541, 561 and 583 in the MARC 21 Bibliographic and Holdings Formats (approved as revised)

The proposal defines an indicator for privacy and possibly note control for the 541, 561 and 583) in order to control public access to information such as appraisal value and donor.

2004-04: Definition of Field 258 (Philatelic Issue Data) in the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format (approved as presented)

The proposal defines Field 258 (Philatelic Issue Data) in the MARC 21 bibliographic format to record data relating to the issuing jurisdiction and denomination for philatelic material.

Reports

Sally McCullogh (Library of Congress) presented the first installment of a paper summarizing a study prepared for LC: Assessment of Options for Handling Full Unicode Character Encodings in MARC21.

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Last updated February 28, 2004