BCC98/SMF/3

DATE: July 2, 1998

REPORT OF THE MARBI/USMARC ADVISORY GROUP MEETING
Washington, DC
June 27-29, 1998

MARBI and the USMARC Advisory Group met in three sessions during the ALA annual meeting in Washington, DC. Outgoing chair Jacquelene Riley (University of Cincinnati) led the sessions.

Announcements:
The Library of Congress reported that the print version of the concise format is now available from CDS. A combined format for authority and bibliographic data will be published by the end of the year. It will no longer be called USMARC, but the new name has not yet been decided upon. Also look for a USMARC holdings update in the near future. Electronic versions of the relator/source codes are now available, with the following resources coming soon: country codes, language codes, and geographic area codes. The Library of Congress will also maintain the ASCII version of these documents. The USMARC listserv archive on the web now features new browsing and searching capabilities (see http://lcweb.loc.gov/marc/ ). Bruce Johnson will be the new chair of MARBI.

Highlights:
Several of the papers discussed at this meeting are of interest to the music library community. Proposal 98-11 recommended creation of specific 007 fields for kits and for printed music in the bibliographic format, and also raised the question of what "printed music" should be called when that music is digitized. Proposal 98-13 recommended defining field 856 in the USMARC Authorities Format. Proposal 98-15 recommended making certain pre-AACR2 fields obsolete, including field 262, 400, 410 and 411. Proposal 98-16 recommended a new way to mark nonfiling characters in all MARC formats. Discussions on these issues are summarized below.

Proposals

98-7: Recording Incorrect Dates in Field 008/06-14 in the USMARC Bibliographic Format (Approved as amended)

This proposal addresses how to provide access to incorrect publication dates appearing on items. The amended proposal states that only corrected dates are put in 008/07-14, and it defines a new value "x" for subfield $a in field 046 for incorrect dates. Two additional subfields will be established in field 046 for Incorrect Date 1 and Incorrect Date 2. The Library of Congress will determine at a later date which subfields these will be.

98-8: Coding of Exceptions to Regularity Patterns in Field 853-855 in the USMARC Holdings Format (Approved)

This paper explores the coding of regularity patterns in the USMARC Holdings Format and the current difficulties in coding "regular" exceptions. With this proposal, subfield $y becomes repeatable.

98-9: Changes to the USMARC Classification Format for Number Building (Approved)

The Library of Congress brought this proposal forward to address the needs for a calculator function in the online LC Classification schedules. The paper proposes the addition of field 764 (Rule Identification) and the definition of the first indicator in field 762 (Table Identification) to show the order of the application of each table while building a number.

98-10: Definition of Subfield $0 for Record Control Number in the 7XX fields in the USMARC Classification and Community Information =46ormats (Approved as amended)

This paper proposes changing the subfield for Record control number from $w to $0 in the Classification and Community Information formats as part of format harmonization with CAN/MARC. MARBI decided to "delete" $w instead of making it "obsolete" in these fields.

98-11: Changes to the USMARC Holdings/Bibliographic Formats Resulting from the New Holdings Standard (Z39.71) (Approved as amended)

This paper proposes the creation of 007 fields (physical form designator) for Kit and for Music in the Bibliographic Format, in order to conform with field 007 in the Holdings format, as reflected in the newly balloted NISO Holdings standard, Z39.71.

The additions are: 007/00 (Category of material)
o (Kit)
q (Music (exclusive of sound recording))
007/01 (Specific material designation)
u (Unknown)

The proposal suggests "music (exclusive of sound recording)" to substitute for the existing phrase "printed music." The Music Library Association has an opportunity to influence this terminology, but only a short time frame in which to do so. MARBI did not approve the terminology change of 007 (Map) to 007 (Cartographic material).

98-12: Additional Indicator Value in Field 355 (Security Classification Control) of the USMARC Bibliographic Format (Approved)

This paper proposes the definition of indicator value 5 in Field 355 (Security Classification Control) to indicate that the security classification pertains to the entire record.

98-13: Defining Field 856 in the USMARC Authorities Format (Approved)

This paper proposes extending the 856 field to the Authorities format as a potential means of improving access to information about the entity covered by the authority record. Field 856 is already defined for the Bibliographic, Classification and Community Information formats. While this proposal gives a provision for use of this field, it will be up to groups like NACO to determine when and how it will be utilized in authority records.

98-14: Additional Code List for Field 052 of the USMARC Bibliographic format (Approved option 1 as amended)

This paper proposes broadening field 052 (Geographic Classification Code) to allow for recording a code for a geopolitical entity other than from the Library of Congress Classification. The first indicator is defined as Source of code, with values for the Library of Congress, the U.S Department of Defense, and source specified in $2. Subfield $c was added for the name of a populated place. Due to the extension of this field's content, it will now be named "Geographic Classification."

98-15: Obsolete fields in the USMARC Bibliographic Format (Not approved)

This proposal arose from a concern regarding unfinished format harmonization with CAN/MARC. If these fields and subfields (261, 262, 400, 410, 411, X11 $q, 260 $d) are not made obsolete in USMARC, CAN/MARC will have to define these previously obsolete fields anew. Much discussion ensued about this paper, focusing especially on the paper's assumption that enough retrospective conversion had taken place in North America, to obviate the need for these fields in the future. MARBI rejected this assumption and the proposal. The Canadians will need to define these fields in the harmonized format but could give instructions not to use them.

98-16: Nonfiling characters in all formats (Not approved)

This proposal presented the concept of using encircling control characters to identify nonsorting characters throughout the various USMARC formats. This is a more flexible and extensible technique than the current practice of dealing only with non-filing characters that appear at the beginning of cataloging data in access fields. While the proposal was generally well received, MARBI decided that it needed more work, especially regarding creation of rules to specify what constitutes nonfiling characters. The revised proposal will return at the next MARBI meeting.

The issues discussed along with this proposal included LC's current practice of sometimes counting diacritics as non-filing characters ("Der =F7ffentliche ..." has a filing indicator of 5, while traced titles beginning with diacritics have a filing indicator of 0), and a similar situation occurring with titles in brackets. LC's practice has not been consistently applied and does not match that of CAN/MARC, so look for a revision to LC's practice soon.

98-17: Reading program information in the USMARC Bibliographic Format (Approved as amended)

This proposal suggests the definition of field 526 (Study program) to record information about interactive multimedia reading programs that are related to materials described in MARC records. Subfield $i was defined for display text, when a pre-defined indicator value would not suffice, and subfield $5 was added to specify the Institution to which the field applies. The K-12 library community will be the primary users of this field.

98-18: Unicode Identification and Encoding in USMARC records (Approved as amended)

This proposal specifies changes to enable the encoding of records using the 16 bit Universal Character Set (USC-2) (ISO 10646) and Unicode. It recommends the use of UTF-8, with further investigation for future specification of UTF-16 encoding. Leader position 09 will be defined as "Character coding scheme." Although this proposal was approved, its short-term impact on USMARC users is limited, since the USMARC character set governs what characters are allowed in our records.

Discussion Papers

DP 108: Recording language of heading in USMARC Authority records

This paper discusses the possible addition of a subfield for language of heading to Authority records. This is a concern for records shared internationally, especially in bilingual countries. Discussion focused on the issue of whether the language of the catalog was a more meaningful distinction to make. Further discussion of the implications of this paper will continue on the USMARC listserv.

DP 109: Identifying transliteration schemes in USMARC formats

This paper derived from the upcoming change from Wade Giles to Pinyin for Chinese romanization. It discusses the need to identify a transliteration scheme in MARC records at the field level and proposes a possible technique. This paper will likely return as a proposal, with real-life examples.

DP 110: Enhancement of Computer file 007 in the USMARC Bibliographic/Holdings Formats

This well-developed paper discusses the enhancement and expansion of the Computer File 007 values to accommodate better retrieval and management of digitally reformatted and preserved materials. Two alternatives were explored: making slight changes to the existing six bytes to make them more inclusive, while adding seven new optional bytes to specifically address the needs of digitally reformatted materials; or creation of a new 007 for digitally reformatted and preserved materials. Further discussion will take place on the USMARC listserv.

DP 111: Alternate graphics without 880 in Bibliographic, Holdings, Authority, and Community Information records

This paper discusses the problems with the field 880 technique for alternate graphic data in MARC records and proposes eliminating the 880 fields altogether. Instead, the paper suggests making the various parallel fields repeatable for non-Roman data. One issue raised in this discussion is that field 880's definition is Roman-centric. Given the response to this discussion paper from the bibliographic utilities ("you can't underestimate the impact"), changing the scope note of the 880 would be the easier route.

Respectfully submitted,

Kathy Glennan
Chair, Subcommittee on MARC Formats
Music Library Association Liaison to MARBI

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Last updated April 18, 2000