BCC2004/SMF/3

REPORT OF THE MARBI/MARC ADVISORY COMMITTEE MEETING
Orlando, Fla.
June 26-27, 2004

 

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

Summary:

This year’s meeting was occupied primarily with new proposals and discussion papers, and discussion of the major issues involved in the adoption of Unicode for library catalog records.

Highlights:

2004-05: Changes Needed to Accommodate RISM Data--Music Incipits


This proposal was a modified version of the definition of a MARC field for music incipits presented as a discussion paper at ALA midwinter in Jan. 2004


The proposal defines field 031 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.


As a result of discussion at the meeting, the proposal was modified to make it less strictly based on specific RISM practices and to expand the options for web links. The proposal was approved as amended and is scheduled for implementation by the end of 2004.

Other Proposals:

2004-06: Defining the First Indicator and New Subfields in Field 017 to Suppress Display Labels in the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format (approved with editorial changes)


The proposed suppression of display labels will provide flexibility in expressing a variety of types of registration numbers. It also defines subfield $d to record the date of copyright registration.


2004-07: Applying Field 752 (Added Entry - Hierarchical Place Name) for Different Purposes in the MARC 21 Bibliographic Formats (recommendation to return as revised proposal)


Libraries have various needs for catalog access by hierarchical place name, including place of publication, area of coverage for newspapers and for subject analysis. After discussion, MARBI recommended that current field 752 be revised and that a new subject field (652 or 662) for hierarchical geographic subject access.


2004-08: Changing the MARC-8 to UCS Mapping for the Halves of Doublewide Diacritics from the Unicode/UCS Half Diacritic Characters to the Unicode/UCS Doublewide Diacritic Characters (approved)


Affected by the proposal are the ligature used in LC transliteration of Cyrillic languages and the double tilde in Tagalog.

Discussion Paper

2004-DP04: Use of ISBNs and LCCNs in MARC 21 Bibliographic Records


Although many libraries treat the ISBN, LCCN and other standard numbers as unique identifiers for purposes of duplicate detection and overlay in online catalogs, in actual practice, their use is not reliably consistent. The paper proposes revising and expanding the existing MARC21 coding for these numbers to make them more reliable. MARBI recommended the paper return as a proposal be expanded to cover other standard number fields, such as the 024.

Reports

Library of Congress (Sally McCallum):

Sally led a further discussion of a paper presented at the midwinter meeting: Assessment of Options for Handling Full Unicode Character Encodings in MARC21

Respectfully submitted,
Paul Cauthen
Chair, Subcommittee on MARC Formats
Music Library Association Liaison to MARC Advisory Committee

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Last updated September 2, 2004