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DATE: December 20, 2013
REVISED:
NAME: Making Subfield $c Repeatable in Fields X10 and X11 of the MARC 21 Bibliographic and Authority Formats
SOURCE: Canadian Committee on MARC (CCM)
SUMMARY: Recording multiple location names in relation to conferences is sometimes needed (e.g., RDA 11.13.1.8). Subfield $c (Location of meeting) is currently not repeatable in fields 110, 111, 610, 611, 710, 711, 810 and 811 of the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format and fields 110, 111, 410, 411, 510, 511, 710 and 711 of the MARC 21 Authority Format. Catalogers are instructed to record multiple adjacent locations in a single $c subfield, which does not support optimal machine parsing of the data, potentially impeding identification and retrieval activities.
KEYWORDS: Fields 110, 111 (BD, AD); Fields 610, 611 (BD); Fields 710, 711 (BD, AD); Fields 810, 811 (BD); Fields 410, 411, 510, 511 (AD); Location of meeting (BD, AD)
RELATED:
STATUS/COMMENTS:
12/20/13 – Made available to the MARC community for discussion.
01/25/14 – Results of MARC Advisory Committee discussion: Approved as submitted.
03/12/14 - Results of MARC Steering Group review - Agreed with the MAC decision.
Access points for named meetings, including congresses and conferences, may have more than one associated location. RDA 11.13.1.8 Number, Date, and Location of a Conference, Etc. states that “if the sessions of a conference, etc., were held in two or more locations, add each of the place names.” Similarly, AACR2 24.7B4 also allowed for the recording of multiple place names associated with meetings such as conferences and congresses. This indicates that the need to support precise markup of multiple place names for meetings has been long-standing. Currently instances of multiple place names are incorporated into a single $c subfield.
Keeping subfield $c non-repeatable reflects the AACR2 focus on building unique access points, whereas making it repeatable and separating place names into distinct elements would improve machine-parsing of the information. Further, creating distinct elements by means of repeated $c subfields would increase semantic clarity of the data in each $c subfield, and therefore enhance identification and retrieval.
Thus, it seems preferable that the $c subfield be made repeatable for these access points in the bibliographic and authority records.
Currently subfield $c of fields 110, 111, 610, 611, 710, 711, 810 and 811 of the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format and fields 110, 111, 410, 411, 510, 511, 710 and 711 of the MARC 21 Authority Format is defined in four areas: X10 Corporate Names – General Information, and X11 Meeting Names – General Information, in both Authority and Bibliographic formats. While examples differ in these four areas of the documentation, the definition of subfield $c is the same:
$c - Location of meeting
Place name or a name of an institution where a meeting was held. Multiple adjacent locations are contained in a single subfield $c.
An example in the Authority and Bibliographic formats for X11 (Meeting Names – General Information) shows multiple place names separated by a conjunctive word and punctuation:
111 2#$aWorld Peace Conference$n(1st :$d1949 :$cParis, France and Prague, Czechoslovakia)
A second similar example from the Bibliographic format for X10 (Corporate Names – General Information):
110 2#$aAmerican Library Association.$bConference$c(Washington, D.C. and London, England)
If subfield $c were repeatable, the previous examples would be marked up as follows:
111 2#$aWorld Peace Conference$n(1st :$d1949 :$cParis, France; $cPrague, Czechoslovakia)
110 2#$aAmerican Library Association.$bConference$c(Washington, D.C.; $cLondon, England)
Note: The punctuation presented here follows instructions found in RDA Appendix E.1.2.4 [Presentation of] Access Points Representing Corporate Bodies, “Separate multiple locations by a semicolon.”
With respect to making retrospective changes to data, it is anticipated that meetings held in multiple places will only represent a small portion of established conference headings. Further, making retrospective changes to existing headings is usually a local decision.
The MADSRDF authority companion to the BIBFRAME vocabulary contains the following element for the location of a meeting: Geographic. It is repeatable already.
Make subfield $c (Location of meeting) repeatable in fields 110, 111, 610, 611, 710, 711, 810 and 811 of the MARC 21 Bibliographic format and fields 110, 111, 410, 411, 510, 511, 710 and 711 of the MARC 21 Authority Format.
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