BCC2005/SMF/4

Subcommittee on MARC Formats
2005 Annual Report

Members: Paul Cauthen (Chair), James Alberts , Bruce J. Evans, Grace Fitzgerald, Joe Hafner, Kevin Medows, Spiro Shetuni, Jay Weitz (OCLC representative), Sue Vita (LC representative)

As the MLA representative, Paul Cauthen attended the MARBI/MARC Advisory Committee meetings during the ALA Midwinter and ALA Annual meetings. Of significant interest to the music library community was a proposal from MLA and IAML to add a significant number of new codes for form and genre headings (field 047) and for medium of performance (field 048) to the MARC21 bibliographic format. These new codes were developed and are maintained by IAML. As the medium of performance codes are incompatible with the existing MARC21 codes, the MLA proposal to allow the new codes to be recorded separately was approved. As the form and genre codes are compatible with MARC21 codes, MARBI recommended that the new codes simply be approved for use as MARC21 codes rather than being recorded separately. MLA will return to MARBI with this recommendation at the 2006 ALA midwinter meeting.

At the Subcommittee's joint open meeting in Vancouver with the Authorities Subcommittee, Paul summarized MARBI actions of particular interest to MLA and presented preliminary documentation on the recently-implemented field (031) for music incipits.

Most noteworthy among the other issues considered by the Subcommittee was the development of a discussion paper for MARBI detailing how to make the MARC21 authority record a more effective in tool machine authority processing. The paper was not accepted for consideration by MARBI; it was felt that both the problem and solution lay in the cataloging rules (which are currently undergoing extensive revision), not in MARC21. The Subcommittee plans to follow up with the Authorities Subcommittee on this issue.

Submitted by Paul Cauthen

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Last updated October 9, 2005