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Information is stored as ‘fields’. Each field contains a particular type of information. Many fields contain subfields, and each subfield is identified by an 'indicator' or an alphanumeric code to specify what type of information is contained in the subfield. For example, NEED EXAMPLE.
For general queries, we usually need to extract data from only a few fields and sub-fields. only. These fields are described below. The rest of the fields include record length, coding scheme, etc., which are usually not of interest in materials-related queries.
The myriad levels of confusion for a programmer who is not trained as a cataloguer are not to be understimated in terms of time required to understand the MARC data and to write code to extract the correct data elements. Those who plan to use MARC data in their queries should work closely with colleagues who have extensive experience with MARC.
This documentation briefly describes a few of the main fields that query writers will need to use in order to count materials by format. Queries that need to include details of materials, it is necessary to consult with an experienced cataloger or query writer who has in-depth knowledge of the MARC system.
FIXED FIELDS
These fields have no subfields, and therefore no indicators which are associated with subfields. All information is indicated according to fixed character designations (example with code below),
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This field is used for information about special aspects of the item being cataloged that cannot be coded in field 008. Table 4 below shows a row of data of the 006 field where the 000 leader field indicates it is a computer file. In the screen shot below, .
Unlike the previously defined fields, the first character in the 006 field is contained in the first space, and NOT in the second space. To add to the illogic, the documentation refers to this as character position 00.
There is a one-to-one correspondence between the 006 and the 008 fields, because the 006 field is a sort of ‘appendix’ field for 008 information. Note that everything in 006 appears in the same order as 008 but NOT in the same charcter spaces. From the marc 006 documentation: "In all cases, field 006 positions 01-17 relate to positions 18-34 in one of the field 008 configurations." (See the section 'Guidelines for Applying Content Designators.)
the 1st space (character 00) in the 'content' column of the 006 field identifies 'form of material'. As seen in the screen shot below (Table 4), the 1st space (character 00) is the character 'm'. Referring to the documentation for the 006 field (under 'Field Definition and Scope'), ‘m’ indicates Computer file/Electronic resource. (Recall that this material type has been determined by the values present in the leader 000 field).
After that, the remaining characters are material-specificIn Table 4 below, the ‘o’ in the 6th space indicates ‘online’, and the ‘d’ in the 9th space indicates that the computer file type is a document. Looking under 'Computer files/Electronic Resources' in the 006 documentation, we see that the 6th character describes the 'Form of item' and the 9th character describes 'type Type of compter computer file'. However, for possible values for form of item/material, we need to look at the material-specific characters are found in the documentation for the 008 field, where we see that for . As the example below refers to a computer file, when the form of item ='o' , it is an online material. Note that the 008 field contains information for the form of item/material in character 23. Everything in 006 appears in the same order as 008 but not in the same charcter spaces. The 006 field is a sort of ‘appendix’ field for 008 information.
Table 4.
, the ‘o’ in the 6th space indicates ‘online’, and the ‘d’ in the 9th space indicates that the computer file type is a document.
Table 4.
Fixed Field 007 – Physical Description
This field is relatively sane. As in the case of the 006 field, the first character in the 007 field is contained in the first space, and NOT in the second space, and is referred to as the 00 character. The first character indicates category of material, and based on that, possible characteristics for each type of material. All this information is contained in the main documentation page for the 007 field, with clear links to details. For example, if the first character is ‘a’, that indicates the material is a map.
Character spaces that follow indicate map characteristics. The 01 character (the second space) indicates material designation (Atlas, or Diagram, or Map, and so on). Clicking on ‘Maps’ on the main 007 documentation, we get all possible values of all characters for maps.
In the screenshot below (table 5), the first character in the 00 position is ‘c’, indicating it is an electronic resource. Clicking on details for 'electronic resource', we see that the second character (in the 01 position) is ‘r’, which indicates it is a remote resource. The fourth charater (in the 03 position) refers to 'color', and the value 'n' indicates 'non-applicable'.
Table 5.
For a brief description of all fields including fields with indicators, please see the MARC documentation 'Understanding MARC'.
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