[Koha-devel] MARC fields order

[Bryan Baldus]

At 11:04 AM -0500 2/23/09, Eric Bégin wrote:
>I do have an Koha installation that has a strange problem.  The MARC
>Fields are not numerically ordered.
>...
>Anybody know how those fields are sorted?

MARC fields don't necessarily need to be sorted 
numerically, especially for 5xx and 6xx fields. 
Some catalogers say the fields should be in tag 
number order, but others say that the 5xx should 
be in AACR2 order, or in order of importance 
(allowing for putting a field first if deemed 
more important than AACR2 order would have it). 
So, for video records, 538 should be the first 
note, followed by 546, then other notes. For 6xx, 
the order is of importance/relevance--the most 
important subject heading would be listed 1st and 
is often intended to match the classifications. 
For example, if a book is chiefly about United 
States--Politics and government--2001-, with some 
coverage (more than 20%, less than U.S. politics 
and government) of Presidents--United 
States--Biography, the 6xx would have 651 
followed by 650. The system should not reorder 
the fields unless explicitly told to do so by the 
cataloger.

I hope this helps,

Bryan Baldus
Cataloger
Quality Books Inc.
The Best of America's Independent Presses
1-800-323-4241x402
bryan.baldus at quality-books.com
eijabb at cpan.org
http://home.inwave.com/eija