BCC2008/SMF/3

REPORT ON MARBI MEETINGS
ALA Annual
June 2008  

MARBI (The Machine Readable Bibliographic Information Committee) met on June 28-29 to discuss the following discussion papers and proposals. Many of the proposals were relatively minor changes required by European libraries to convert data to MARC-21. Other discussion papers and proposals, manly covering issues relating to encoding RDA in MARC-21 were more controversial and were generally not accepted as written. Although this report includes all of the proposals, some discussion papers were not included either because they were already covered in the Proposals or the issues they cover were not judged particularly important to the music community.

MARC Proposals

• 2008-10: Definition of a subfield for Other standard number in field 534 of the MARC 21 bibliographic format. This proposal for encoding “other” standard numbers (and non-standard numbers, such as publisher numbers for sound recordings) was passed with no changes.
• 2008-09: Definition of Videorecording format codes in field 007/04 of the MARC 21 bibliographic format. This proposal called for new fixed field codes in the 007/04 byte, mainly to accommodate the increasing visibility of the Blu-Ray format. It was agreed that a code for Blu-Ray was necessary, but because the format is not being continued, the Committee decided not to create a code for HD DVD at this time.
• 2008-08: Definition of subfield $z in field 017 of the MARC 21 Bibliographic and addition of the field to the MARC 21 Holdings formats. This was brought forward by the National Library of Spain, which wanted a method to differentiate between current and invalid agency-assigned numbers. This proposal passed with minor changes.
• 2008-07: Making field 440 (Series Statement/Added Entry--Title) obsolete in the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format. In one of the more heavily-contested debates in this MARBI meeting, proposal 2008-07 was finally passed, making the 440 field obsolete, so that all series information will be recorded using 490/8xx combinations. This change was supported by representatives of the larger research libraries, vendors, the OCLC representatives, and others, because needing to focus only on 8xx fields rather than having definitive series information split between 440 and 8xx fields will, in their opinion, make large-scale processing series processing more efficient. A representative of small school library vendors expressed concern that small library systems which do not have the capacity to handle 8xx information will be hurt by this change, but on further discussion, it was decided that MARBI could not afford to delay this measure based on the technical capacities of the weakest vendor systems on the market, and that those systems would have to be overhauled.
• 2008-06: Adding information associated with the Series Added Entry fields (800-830). This proposal covers adding issue/volume-specific information in the subfield 3 of the 8xx fields. Although put forward by CONSER as primarily a serials-specific change, this could also have potentially useful information for encoding information on specific works or subseries in composers’ complete works and monumental sets.
• 2008-05/4: Enhancing field 502 (Dissertation note) of the MARC 21 Bibliographic format. This was the only proposal by the RDA/MARC Working Group that was passed with no changes. It calls for specific subfield encoding of dissertation information in the 502 field. Those who catalog dissertations frequently should consult this proposal, although no changes will be made to the format until late 2008 at the earliest.
• 2008-05/3: New content designation for RDA elements: Content type, Media type, Carrier type. MARBI decided not to take action on this proposal, preferring to table it until ALA Midwinter 2009. None of the possible options (basically, preferring one new field with three subfields, two new fields (one for carrier type and one for media type and content type) or three new fields, one for each content designation. The discussion of this proposal largely foundered, though, on the necessity for English-language-specific codes. The representative of the German MARC community forcefully expressed this, and other representatives were willing to entertain a coded solution for this rather than creating more text-dependent fields.
• 2008-05/2: Identifying work and expression records in the MARC 21 Bibliographic format. This proposal was not accepted in its current version, largely for the same reasons that 2008-05/03 was not accepted; English-language dependency and the general preference for encoded information such as Uniform Resource Identifiers. MARBI will revisit this proposal at MLA Midwinter 2009.
• 2008-04: Changes to Nature of entire work and Nature of content codes in field 008 of the MARC 21 Bibliographic format. Although this proposal to create new bytes to accommodate the Finnish need for codes for yearbooks, calendars, and comic strips/graphic novels incurred a certain amount of discussion, there was very little actual controversy; what there was revolved around terminology for comics (as opposed to “comic strips,” which already have a byte in 008/24 in MARC-21. Terminology as used in the proposal, which reflects current usage in a more understandable way than some of the alternatives proposed (including using “serial artworks” for comic strips and graphic novels).

MARC Discussion Papers

• 2008-DP06: Coding deposit programs as methods of acquisitions in field 008/07 of the MARC 21 holdings format. This discussion paper relates to a specific need by the National Library of Spain to specifically encode deposit programs, as opposed to other types of depository programs. MARBI generally found this proposal difficult to accept, mainly because other national “depository libraries” (mainly the British Libraries) have longstanding practices for encoding this information and creating a new byte in field 008/07 would cause complications in the current status of depository library coding. MARBI will reconsider this discussion paper if it is returned at ALA Midwinter 2009.
• 2008-DP05/3: Treatment of controlled lists of terms and coded data in RDA and MARC 21. It was generally decided that controlled lists of terms in RDA and MARC-21 map well to each other and that a subfield should or will be available to indicate the specific controlled list from which data will be drawn for MARC-21 encoded descriptions.
• 2008-DP05/2: New data elements in the MARC 21 Authority Format. Since FRAD requires a great deal of data in authority records for persons and corporate bodies than we currently do not include in authority records, this discussion paper was brought forward to clarify how this might be encoded. Although there was a great deal of discussion of individual data elements, it was generally understood that the authorities format would have to include new coding in order to meet FRAD standards. The RDA/MARC Working Group may return with this as a formal proposal at ALA Midwinter 2009.

Prepared by Jim Alberts
Chair, Subcommittee on MARC Formats
July 2008

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Last updated July 30, 2008