*** This version of Confluence is for testing only and contains a copy of content from June 29th 2026. No changes will be preserved. ***
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The 008 field contains information about the physical form of the resource, such as form of material, language, etc. Some characters are common for all materials, and others differ based on material. For example, characters 7-10 and 11-14 indicate date1 and date2 respectively, for all materials. However, characters 8-21 indicate type of illustration for books, and characters 18-19 indicate form of composition for music.
There are seven possible material configurations: Books (BK), Computer Files (CF), Maps (MP), Music (MU), Continuing Resources (CR), Visual Materials (VM), and Mixed Materials (MX). Once the material type has been determind by the system from the leader field, we can obtain information relevant to that specific material type from the 008 field.
It is important to know that material configurations in the 008 field are determined by the system and not by the cataloger, depending on cataloger entries for the 000 leader field.
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