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The MARBI agenda for Midwinter contains a very interesting set of
preliminary proposals from the German and Austrian national libraries
relating to their adoption of the MARC 21 formats:<br><br>
<a href="http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2007/2007-dp01.html">2007-DP01</a>
: Changes for the German and Austrian conversion to MARC 21 <br>
<a href="http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2007/2007-dp01.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2007/2007-dp01.html</a><br><br>
There are many interesting things in this document, and I think it would
be worth your attentions.<br><br>
However, there is one item on which I would like your advice, and as I
cannot attend the Bibliographic Standards Committee meeting in Seattle, I
would like to ask for comments now.<br><br>
In section 2.10 of the document, they propose to add subfield $5 to the
6XX subject access fields, in order to record the institution assigning
the subject headings.<br><br>
Aside from the question about whether this sort of element-level
responsibility should be supported in the MARC formats, I'm interested in
whether this slightly different definition of $5 is compatible with the
use of this subfield in other fields.<br><br>
1. Subfield $5 has NOT been defined in the 6XX fields (other than
655). Has anyone ever encountered a case in which a copy-specific
subject heading would be appropriate? Should we leave open the
possibility of using subfield $5 in 6XX fields IN THE SAME WAY IT IS USED
IN OTHER FIELDS?<br><br>
2. If we do allow for the recording of the institution responsible for
the data content on a particular field, are there fields in which $5 is
already defined (for copy-specific information) for which the recording
of the institution responsible for assigning the field content
would be appropriate?<br><br>
3. In other words, are there good reasons for keeping these two different
concepts in separate subfields?<br><br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>John
Attig<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>MARBI
Liaison<br>
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