[DCRM-L] MARC 562 in records for printed books

[Noble, Richard]

This is a belated follow-up to a discussion from April/May 2017, "Subject:
[DCRM-L] MARC coding for annotations, decorations etc."

I'm looking at a record which uses the 562 field to record details of an
anomalous copy of a printed book in which cancellans leaves have been bound
at the end, rather than substituted for the intended cancellanda. The
disposition of these leaves is of manifestation-level interest regarding
the manufacture of the edition, evidence of the details of production that
could not normally be inferred from a properly bound copy; and I would give
it in a 500 note, since the *information* applies to all ideal-copy
instances of the book.

The discussion of 562 seemed to center on the question whether it is an
inherently item-specific field, or one which has bearing on variants within
a multiple-copy resource, e.g. variant states or anomalies that do not
amount to a distinction of manifestations. MARC is coy about this, but the
examples seem to relate to archival practice--e.g. documents existing in
multiple copies (I'd imagine mimeographs, carbons, and the like) with
variants that evidence distribution or the like, where the
expectation/perspective is otherwise that one is dealing with unique
materials. This can also be inferred from the language of the field
definition concerning "copies or versions" that could *conceivably* differ
in some respect--all of this an eccentric way of talking about objects that
are inherently multiple.

No time to make this question less crabbed--but am I right to think that
562 isn't the right place for the note in question?

RICHARD NOBLE :: RARE MATERIALS CATALOGUER :: JOHN HAY LIBRARY
BROWN UNIVERSITY  ::  PROVIDENCE, R.I. 02912  ::  401-863-1187
<Richard_Noble at Br <RICHARD_NOBLE at BROWN.EDU>own.edu>
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