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MARC PROPOSAL NO. 2014-06

DATE: May 22, 2014
REVISED:

NAME: Defining New Field 388 for Time Period of Creation Terms in the MARC 21 Authority and Bibliographic Formats

SOURCE: ALCTS Subject Analysis Committee Subcommittee on Genre/Form Implementation

SUMMARY: This paper proposes the establishment of new field 388 in the Authority and Bibliographic formats to record the time period of creation or origin of works and expressions.

KEYWORDS: Field 388 (AD, BD); Field 648 (BD); Chronological categories (AD, BD); Genre/Form (AD, BD); Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms for Library and Archival Materials; LCGFT

RELATED: 2012-DP03; 2013-DP06

STATUS/COMMENTS:
05/22/14 – Made available to the MARC community for discussion.

06/29/14 – Results of MARC Advisory Committee discussion: Approved, with the following amendments: 1) Define field 388 for Time Period of Creation, with editorial changes to the indicator value captions following MARC documentation naming conventions. 2) Add field 370 (Associated Place) to the Bibliographic format (NOTE: field 370 should have been added to the Bibliographic format when it was defined in the Authority format in 2009. Due to an oversight, it was not.). 3) Repeal the recent MARBI decision (proposed in 2013-07) to define a first indicator value (Type of date or time period) in field 648 (Subject Added Entry-Chronological Term) in the Bibliographic format; make the indicator "undefined" again. Type of time period will be covered in the Bibliographic format by the first indicator in new field 388.

07/24/14 - Results of MARC Steering Group review - Agreed with the MAC decision.

Proposal No. 2014-06: Defining New Field 388

1. BACKGROUND

MARC Discussion Paper No. 2012-DP03 and MARC Proposal 2013-07 described the implementation of Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms for Library and Archival Materials (LCGFT) and the implications of current projects to establish LCGFT terms for music and literature. Some aspects of works and expressions that are currently expressed with LCSH form headings are out of scope for LCGFT, and will need to be recorded elsewhere in bibliographic and authority records.

One of those characteristics is the chronological origin (i.e., time period of creation) of works, especially for describing the contents of collections/aggregated works.

The chronological origin of works is often included in form subdivisions or form headings in LCSH.

Examples:

Operas $y 18th century [for a collection of operas created in the 18th century]

English drama $y 19th century [for an anthology of English drama created in the 19th century]

Literature, Medieval [for an anthology European literature created during the Middle Ages]

Rock music $y 1961-1970 [for rock music popular during the seventh decade of the 20th century, or if that is not known, recorded during that decade]

Christian literature, Early [for a collection of literature written by Christians before the 8th century AD]

German poetry $y Early modern, 1500-1700 [for an anthology of German poetry created during the 16th and 17th centuries]

In late 2014 or early 2015, LC subject headings such as these will no longer be assigned to works of literature and music. Instead, LC genre/form terms – which do not include explicit indications of chronology – will be assigned. Unless another place for the chronological aspect is found, access to this important aspect of works and expressions will be lost.

In 2013, MARBI approved new subfields for the 046 fields in both bibliographic and authority records. It also approved new indicator values in field 648, but only for the Bibliographic format. This new coding was a significant step toward providing ongoing access to chronological aspects of works, but one more MARC revision is necessary: the creation of field 388 for use in authority records for works and expressions. Field 388 would use alpha-numeric terms, thereby mimicking the use of field 648 in bibliographic records. Though the main focus of this paper is on defining field 388 in the Authority format, it should be noted that 388 could also be defined in the Bibliographic format as a better place to record non-subject terms in the format.

2. DISCUSSION

MARC Proposal 2013-07 proposed adding two new subfields to field 046 (Special Coded Dates) in the Bibliographic and Authority formats, subfield $o and $p. They are for the single or starting date for aggregated contents and the ending date for aggregated contents, respectively. The same proposal also requested the creation of new first indicator values in bibliographic field 648 (Subject Added Entry--Chronological Term), and a revision of the meaning of first indicator blank (#). First indicator value “0” would indicate the date or time period depicted, value “1” the date or time period of creation or origin, and value blank that there was no information provided. The proposal was approved as submitted by the ALA MARBI Committee at the MARC Advisory Committee meetings on January 27, 2013. In March 2013 the LC/LAC/BL review agreed with the MARBI decision.

One additional aspect of the coding of the chronology facet needs to be considered: the need to record chronological terms in authority records for works and expressions. Ideally, information about the period or dates of creation would be recorded just once, instead of in multiple bibliographic records for the various manifestations. MARBI agreed with this principle in January 2013 when it approved Proposals 2013-05 and 2013-06, which created the 385 and 386 fields (audience and creator/contributor characteristics, respectively) in both bibliographic records and authority records for works and expressions. We now ask that MAC approve the use of the 388 field in authorities for works and expressions, based on the same logic.

At the ALA Annual Conference in 2013, MARBI reviewed Discussion Paper No. 2013-DP06, which suggested the creation of a new authority field 388 for chronological characteristics. This proposal is based on comments made at that meeting.

In LCSH, chronological terms are often used in conjunction with a form to express the period of origin. The period is usually expressed through alphabetical or alpha-numeric phrases, and usually appears in a chronological subdivision (e.g., --19th century; --Early modern, 1500-1700). In some specific cases, the period of origin is expressed through the use of a date span only (e.g., --2001-2010 under headings for popular music genres). The chronology may also sometimes be expressed through the use of a chronological form heading (e.g., Renaissance literature). [Note: LCSH also includes general headings for centuries, decades, years, etc. (e.g., Nineteen sixty-three, A.D.; Nineteenth century; Renaissance), but those headings are used only to describe the contents of works, and are not used in conjunction with form headings to describe the period of origin of the work.]

When 2013-DP06 was presented, much of the discussion centered on the question of whether the data in the 388 field would duplicate that in the 046 field in authority records. While the possibility of direct duplication cannot be ruled out completely, the intent of the two fields is different. The 046 field provides a location for recording discrete dates. Subfields $o and $p permit the coding of specific beginning and ending dates for aggregates, respectively, while subfields $k and $l allow for the coding of specific starting and ending dates for a single entity. The 388 field, on the other hand, would be used to provide access to time periods that are more amorphous, such as the Middle Ages or the Renaissance. This type of access is important for five reasons.

Historical or cultural periods are often difficult to date exactly, and specific dates may differ from location to location. For example, the Renaissance began sometime in the 14th century and ended in the 17th century, but the exact dates cannot be determined because it grew and subsided organically. Adding to the problem of dating, the Renaissance began in Italy and then spread to other parts of Europe. The German Renaissance, for example, began in the mid-15th century, and the French, in the late 15th century. Recording specific dates for the Renaissance in the 046 field would therefore be prone to interpretation and/or error, and would not be helpful to the user. First, the user may not know the precise time period, or that the period of the Renaissance differs based on geography. But also, one cataloger describing a collection of French Renaissance poetry may record the dates of the French Renaissance in the 046, while another who is describing a similar collection may record the dates of the Renaissance as whole. The ensuing divided files would be a disservice to the user. Being able to record the word “Renaissance” resolves the problem. Catalogers may record specific dates in the 046 if they wish, but the 388 field is better for collocation.
There is overlap in time periods. The Renaissance began in the late Middle Ages and is considered to be the beginning of the Early Modern Period. Works created during the 14th and 15th centuries in particular may be considered to be medieval, early modern, or Renaissance, depending on their characteristics (and the intent of the editor of an aggregate). In this situation, a single date or date span in the 046 does not provide the kind of contextual access that is needed.
The significance of date spans differs from place to place or culture to culture. For example, the period of the Middle Ages is pertinent only to Europe, and even then, chiefly to Western Europe. Using only dates coded in the 046 field would do a disservice to users. If a user wanted French literature from the High Middle Ages, for example, then he or she would have to know to search the dates (approximately) 1000-1300, or the computer would have to be able to convert the phrase “High Middle Ages” to the date range found in the 046, neither of which is impossible. But many false hits are likely to be returned, since the dates of the High Middle Ages closely correspond or overlap substantially with the dates of the Song dynasty in China (960-1279) and the Kamakura period in Japan (1185-1333). Using phrases such as High Middle Ages, Song dynasty, and Kamakura period in the 388 field would resolve that problem.
It is not possible to precisely date the creation of some works. The oldest manuscript of Beowulf is dated to between the 8th and 11th centuries. The Iliad is dated to sometime around the 8th century B.C.; Sir Gawayne and the Grene Knight is dated to the late 14th century. In cases such as this, a more general descriptor such as “Ancient” or “Middle Ages” is more useful and practical than attempting to record specific dates.
Editors and publishers of aggregate works are often intentionally vague. The titles of aggregates may indicate only that the works contained in them were created in Ancient Greece, during the period of World War I (i.e., not necessarily the war years themselves, but the lead-up to the war, the war itself, and the years of reconstruction, often ending with the outbreak of World War II) or the Shogunate period. Introductions to such works often are not much more informative. Depending on the number of works contained in the aggregate, it may be more time-effective to record – in a controlled form – a phrase describing the scope of the publication. This is probably even more important for ongoing serials and monographic series, some of which collect works from a designated period of time, because precise boundary dates of origin for the series content may not be fixed. It may be easier to represent this date of origin data with a term for a period rather than with discrete dates.

In addition, it should be noted that the possible overlap of the data in the 046 and 648 fields in bibliographic records was raised during the discussion of 2012-DP03 at the 2012 Annual Conference. The consensus then was that more options would be better. Having both fields available would allow catalogers to exercise judgment, and the availability of one field should not preclude the existence of the other.

In one respect, the scope of the current proposal is different from 2013-07, for Bibliographic field 648, which is used for subject (date and time period covered or depicted) and non-subject (time period of creation) terms. MARC does not include provisions for recording subject terms in Authority records for works and expressions. However, it is useful to define field 388 in the Bibliographic format as the more appropriate field to record non-subject terms in that format. Field 648 in the Bibliographic format could then be restricted to subject terms, which is more consistent with the usage in the 6XX block and with the handling of audience terms.

This proposal also differs from 2013-DP06 in that the definitions of first indicator values 1 and 2 have been revised. In the discussion paper, these two indicator values were defined to express the chronology of individual works and of component works, respectively, but this could have the effect of separating component works from contemporary individual works. The proposal at hand assigns this function – expressing the date of origin of both individual works and to aggregated component works – to value 1, and defining value 2 for the creation or origin date of the aggregation.

3. PROPOSAL

Define a new field in the Authority and Bibliographic formats:

388 – Time Period of Creation (R)

Field Definition and Scope
The time period of creation or origin of the work or expression (including aggregate works), or of the works or expressions contained in an aggregation.

Coded dates or time periods of creation are recorded in field 046.

First Indicator – Type of time period
# - No information provided
1 – Creation
         The time period of creation or origin of the work/expression, or, of the components of an aggregate work considered collectively.
2 – Creation of aggregation
         The time period of creation or origin of an aggregate work

Second Indicator - Undefined
# - Undefined

Subfield Codes
$a - Time period of creation term (R)
$0 - Authority record control number or standard number (R)
$2 - Source of term (NR)
         Specifies a code that identifies the source of a controlled vocabulary used in $a.
$3 - Materials specified (NR)
$6 - Linkage (NR)
$8 - Field link and sequence number (R)

4. EXAMPLES

N.B. Currently there is no LC controlled vocabulary intended for use in field 388. The terms provided in the examples are derived in most cases from LCSH, but do not necessarily match LCSH headings, and are for illustration only. They are not intended to be an indication of future policy for the form of terms used in this field.

In most cases, LCSH literature and music headings are used provisionally in field 380 in the absence of applicable LCGFT terms, which are still under development. The use of FAST (Faceted Application of Subject Terminology) chronological headings is also shown in some examples. Library of Congress Medium of Performance Terms for Music (LCMPT) are used in one example. Library of Congress Demographic Group Terms (LCDGT) terms are also used in some examples, although the vocabulary is still under development.

The examples include three illustrations of the use of 388 2#, but it is not expected that such use would be common, or that it would necessarily be needed in the examples shown.

A. Individual works

All’s well that ends well / by William Shakespeare ; edited by Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine, published in 2006. Probably originally written in 1604 and 1605; originally published in the First Folio in 1623.

046 ## $k 1604 $l 1605
100 1# $a Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. $t All’s well that ends well
370 ## $g England $2 naf
380 ## $a Comedy plays $2 [source code for controlled vocabulary]
388 1# $a Elizabethan period $2 [source code for controlled vocabulary]

Beowulf, originally written between the 8th and 11th centuries A.D.

046 ## $k 07uu/1100 $2 edtf
130 #0 $a Beowulf
380 ## $a Epic poems $2 lcsh
388 1# $a Anglo-Saxon period $2 [source code for controlled vocabulary]

B. Aggregate works/Collections

Broken laughter : select fragments of Greek comedy, a collection of ancient Greek fragments, the dates of which are undetermined, but could range from 8th-6th centuries B.C. to the 7th century A.D.

046 ## $o -07uu/-05uu $p 06uu $2 edtf
130 #0 $a Broken laughter
370 ## $g Greece $2 naf
380 ## $a Comedy plays $2 [source code for controlled vocabulary]
388 1# $a Ancient period $2 [source code for controlled vocabulary]

Violin concertos by Black composers of the 18th & 19th centuries / performed by Rachel Burton and the Encore Chamber Orchestra, published 1997. Individual concertos dates range from 1775 to 1899.

046 ## $k 1997 $o 1775 $p 1899
130 #0 $a Violin concertos by Black composers of the 18th & 19th centuries
380 ## $a Concertos $2 lcsh
382 0# $b violin $a orchestra $2 lcmpt
382 0# $b violin $a string orchestra $2 lcmpt
386 ## $a Composers $a Blacks $2 lcdgt
388 1# $a 18th century $a 19th century $2 [source code for controlled vocabulary]

Les anciens poètes de la France, a monographic series published from 1858-1870.

046 ## $k 1858 $l 1870 $o uuuu $p 1500
130 #0 $a Anciens poètes de la France
370 ## $g France $2 naf
380 ## $a Chansons de geste $a Monographic series $2 lcsh
386 ## $a French $2 lcdgt
388 1# $a Medieval period $2 [source code for controlled vocabulary]
388 2# $a 19th century $2 [source code for controlled vocabulary]

Nineteenth century English drama, an ongoing microform set issued from 1985 on

046 ## $k 1985 $l 9999 $o 1801 $p 1900
130 #0 $a Nineteenth century English drama (Anthology)
370 ## $a Great Britain $2 naf
380 ## $a Drama $2 lcsh
386 ## $a British $2 lcdgt
388 1# $a 19th century $2 [source code for controlled vocabulary]
388 2# $a 20th century $a 21st century $2 [source code for controlled vocabulary]

Forked branches, medieval poetry of the 9th to 14th centuries, with translations into English by Ezra Pound, published in 1985

046 ## $k 1985 $o 0801 $p 1400
130 #0 $a Forked branches
380 ## $a Poetry $2 lcsh
386 ## $a Europeans $2 lcsh $0 (uri)http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85045859
388 1# $a Middle Ages $2 [source code for controlled vocabulary]

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, rock music album recorded in 1966 and 1967; released in 1967

046 ## $k 1967 $o 1966 $p 1967
110 2# $a Beatles. $t Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
380 ## $a Rock music $2 lcsh
388 1# $a 1961-1970 $2 fast
388 1# $a 1960s $2 [source code for controlled vocabulary]

Die grossen Opern, a 22-disc collection of eight Mozart operas, recorded 1964-1979, released in 1980; the individual works date from 1781, 1782, 1786, 1787, 1790, and 1791

046 ## $k 1980 $o 1781 $p 1791
100 1# $a Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, $d 1756-1791. $t Operas. $k Selections. $f 1980
380 ## $a Operas $2 lcsh
388 1# $a 1781-1791 $2 fast
388 1# $a 18th century $2 [source code for controlled vocabulary]
388 2# $a 1980 $2 fast

046 ## $k 2006 $o 1932 $p 1940
130 #0 $a Mae West (Film anthology)
370 ## $g United States $2 naf
380 ## $a Feature films $a Fiction films $2 lcgft
388 1# $a 1930s $a 1940s $2 [source code for controlled vocabulary]

Baroque England, an audio collection of 17th-18th century music released Harmonia Mundi France, 2005.

046 ## $k 2005 $o 1601 $p 1800
130 #0 $a Baroque England (2005)
370 ## $g England $2 naf
370 ## $g France $2 naf
380 ## $a Music $2 lcgft
386 ## $a British $2 lcdgt
388 1# $a Baroque period $2 [source code for controlled vocabulary]

Poems of to-day : first and second series, a collection of late 19th and early 20th century poetry (specific dates of creation unknown), collection originally published in 1924; reprinted in 1976

046 ## $o 18uu $p 192u
130 #0 $a Poems of to-day
370 ## $g England $2 naf
380 ## $a Poetry $2 lcgft
386 ## $a British $2 lcdgt
388 1# $a 19th century $a 20th century $2 [source code for controlled vocabulary]
388 2# $a 20th century $2 [source code for controlled vocabulary]

5. BIBFRAME DISCUSSION

BIBFRAME handles titles and name/titles as bf:Work descriptions, so accommodation in the bf:Work descriptions is all that is needed. BIBFRAME has the property bf:originDate which was designed to accommodate the RDA Date of Work (6.4) and is the date associated with the creation of a work. If the work is an aggregate it would be the date of creation of the aggregate. For individual works contained in the aggregate, individual work descriptions would be created and each description would/could contain the bf:originDate.

6. SUMMARY OF PROPOSED CHANGES

In the MARC 21 Authority and Bibliographic formats, define new field 388 as follows:

388 – Time Period of Creation (R)

First Indicator – Type of time period
# - No information provided
1 – Creation
2 – Creation of aggregation

Second Indicator - Undefined
# - Undefined

Subfield Codes
$a - Time period of creation term (R)
$0 - Authority record control number or standard number (R)
$2 - Source of term (NR)
$3 - Materials specified (NR)
$6 - Linkage (NR)
$8 - Field link and sequence number (R)

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