[Koha-devel] about MARC structure : additionalauthor and illustrator

[Alan Millar]

On Tue, Jun 18, 2002 at 03:01:38PM +0200, paul POULAIN wrote:
> I'm working on MARC stuff and have a question about additionalauthors 
> and illustrators.
> 
> In Steve stuff, he use for every author/illustrator, a 700 field, with 
> $a containing the name and $e containing the role (author or illustrator)
> In my UNIMARC manual, i can find :
> 700 : main responsability : $a as name, and $4 as title. I have no $e 
> subtag.
> 701 : second responsability : same structure.
> 
> How to solve the difference ?

I expect that this will be a problem not only with illustrators, but
also with other data items we just haven't named yet.

I just borrowed a book on MARC from my local public library.  It is
fairly recent, published in 1999.  It talks about the idea of 
"Marc format integration", which means accepting data in multiple 
(or possibly all) flavors of Marc.   The main idea is that some
tags should be considered obsolete, and software should be able 
to accept Marc codes from multiple standards (UNIMARC, USMARC, CANMARC,
etc.).   Software should accept obsolete tags/subfields as input and
map it to the appropriate place, but only produce current standard
tags on output.  The book is "MARC Manual" by Deborah J. Byrne,
ISBN 1-56308-176-8.

If we are normalizing data like the current Koha DB, it is not a
problem to accept the data from multiple tags and put it in the
correct place.  The software *should* be table-driven for the 
tag/subfield to database mapping, not hard-coded.  I did this 
in Rel 1.2  acqui.simple/marcimport.pl.  Take a look at %tagmap and 
&extractmarcfields.  I haven't looked through the 1.4 MARC handling
but I'd recommend a similar approach.

In a pure Marc mode, we need to decide how to handle variant
or obsolete items.  Do we keep them in original form, or map
to new standardized locations?  I'd recommend normalizing, but that's
just me.   If the software is table-driven, and not hard-coded, 
each site could even decide which flavor or variant of MARC it prefers.
Use this list for USMARC, this one for UNIMARC, or customize as
you like, etc.

I'm also just now learning about the fixed-field tags (00x tags).
There's some good information in there that I'd like to be able
to use, such as media format and language.  I'm going to be thinking
about how to break those out into something usable.

Steve- any insight to share on the MARC flavors?  Thanks.

- Alan

----
Alan Millar     --==> am12 at bolis.com <==--