[DCRM-L] Comments please: Subfield $5

Tue Jan 9 09:46:06 MST 2007

I would like to expand on this to answer the first question asked by the 
lady yesterday [the former student of Deborah's], which was, as I 
recollect, what is the difference between the 500 and 590.  As Deborah 
says below, I would restrict the use of the 500 to elements in common 
and make all notes about a specific copy in a 590 local note.  There are 
libraries, specifically the Library of Congress, which make 500 notes 
with $5 at the end.  I, and our patrons, find these confusing, and since 
for the notes there is a specific field for just that kind of 
information, I would propose that best practice would be to use 500 
without the $5.

I hesitated to reply yesterday, as far less experienced in real rare 
book cataloguing than most on this list, but since no one else has 
replied, and this seemed a good handle ...

Deborah J. Leslie wrote:
> I believe it is to our advantage as keepers of rare materials to resist
> any muddying of $5. 
>
> Just as we are careful to separate what is common to the issue and what
> is specific to the copy in description, we should retain the meaning of
> $5 as specific to the copy. Given that, I'd prefer that $5 not even be
> used for headings that are of interest to a particular institution, if
> the headings apply to common elements. 
>
> I'm with Richard: recommend that $2 be expanded to include MARC21
> organizational code to indicate source of heading. The advantage to this
> kind of expansion of $2 for us is that institutions may use it to denote
> headings of local interest that refer to common elements, and keep the
> $5 for local headings only. 
>
> ______________________________________________________
> Deborah J. Leslie, M.A., M.L.S.
> Chair, RBMS Bibliographic Standards Committee
> Head of Cataloging, Folger Shakespeare Library
> 201 East Capitol St., S.E., Washington, D.C. 20003
> djleslie at folger.edu  |  202.675-0369  |  http://www.folger.edu
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu [mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu] On
> Behalf Of Richard Noble
> Sent: Tuesday, 09 January, 2007 10:33
> To: DCRM Revision Group List
> Subject: RE: [DCRM-L] Comments please: Subfield $5
>
>
> At 1/8/2007    11:17 PM, Bob Maxwell wrote:
>   
>> Weighing in on question 2-3, I don't like the idea of using subfield 
>> 5 to mean something else than "local" and I think the proposal is 
>> something different. I think the concepts should be kept separate. 
>> (I'm not sure I understand why the Germans want this by the way, 
>> though if they do want to be able to do this, I think that's 
>> fine--but any clue as to their thinking, John? Why stop at subject 
>> headings? Why not be able to mark every part of the record you added 
>> so you would know exactly who did which iota of the record?)
>>     
>
> As the examples clipped from Bob's message indicate, he uses $5 
> according to its definition in MARC21 app. A:
>
> "Subfield $5 contains the MARC code of the institution or 
> organization that holds the copy to which the data in the field 
> applies. Data in the field may not apply to the universal description 
> of the item or may apply universally to the item but be of interest 
> only to the location cited."
>
> Roughly speaking, $5 indicates that the field is either copy-specific 
> or catalogue-specific; as a special collections cataloguer I'd 
> naturally be very happy to see $5 defined for all 6XX fields for the 
> latter. (We once used 69X for catalogue-specific indexing, but that's 
> not an option in our present system.) (I also occasionally use 500 $5 
> to deal with non-unique/non-universal states, especially in cases 
> where I suspect that I'm dealing with such a thing but cannot be 
> certain using available resources.)
>
> Bob's last question rightly verges on the horrified rhetorical. My 
> guess is that subject indexing has not been a regular feature of 
> German catalogues (if I judge rightly from frequent use of the KVK), 
> and is therefore less conventionalized than it is in Anglo-American 
> practice; and therefore that the proposed use of $5 is really more to 
> specify the source of the heading than it is to localize the impulse 
> to apply the heading--which is more properly the function of $2. If 
> this is so, then perhaps some adaptation of that subfield would be 
> more appropriate--e.g. something like "$2local (RPB)", which would 
> simply extend a provision in MARC Code List for Relators, Sources, 
> Description Conventions, Part IV:
>
> "A special non-specific source code for subject/index terms has been 
> assigned for use in fields 654-658, and 755. The code local, meaning 
> 'locally assigned', should be used whenever a term is a local 
> extension of a published list (e.g., a locally established term that 
> follows the guidelines for particular thesaurus), or a term comes 
> from a local standard."
>
> The necessary tags, indicators, and subfields are already in place to 
> do just that.
>
> RICHARD NOBLE : RARE BOOKS CATALOGER : JOHN HAY LIBRARY : BROWN
> UNIVERSITY
> PROVIDENCE, RI 02912 : 401-863-1187/FAX 863-2093 :
> RICHARD_NOBLE at BROWN.EDU 
>
>
>   

-- 
Barry E. Hinman	
Special Collections Librarian for Cataloging
Department of Special Collections and University Archives
Green Library (Bing Wing 408)
557 Escondido Mall
Stanford, California  94305-6004
bhinman at stanford.edu