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DATE: December 14, 2023
REVISED:
NAME: Refinement of Accessibility Field 341 in the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format
SOURCE: Canadian Committee on Metadata Exchange (CCM)
SUMMARY: This paper proposes adjustment to the Field Definition and Scope, and new and revised subfields in field 341 (Accessibility Content) to allow for recording accessibility features in the MARC21 Bibliographic Format.
KEYWORDS: Field 341 (BD); Accessibility content (BD); Subfield $a, in field 341 (BD); Content access mode (BD); Subfield $2, in field 341 (BD); Subfield $0, in field 341 (BD); Authority record control number or standard number (BD); Subfield $1, in field 341 (BD); Real World Object URI (BD); Accessibility (BD)
RELATED: 2023-DP05; 2018-03; 2017-11; 2017-DP03
STATUS/COMMENTS:
12/14/23 – Made available to the MARC community for discussion.
01/24/24 – Results of MARC Advisory Committee discussion: Approved, with one editorial amendment: add language to address the need to repeat the field with appropriate pairings when encoding multiple terms.
05/15/24 – Results of MARC Steering Group review - Agreed with the MAC decision.
MARC Field 341 (Accessibility Content) was added to the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format in November 2018. In February 2022, the Network Development and MARC Standards Office (NDMSO) of the Library of Congress added sapdv (Schema.org Accessibility Properties for Discoverability Vocabulary) to its list of Accessibility Content Source Codes approved for use with MARC Field 341.
Implementation of the new source code in Field 341 has highlighted some unnecessary restrictions in the Field Definition and Scope. These restrictions impede full use of the new source code. Discussion Paper No. 2023-DP05: "Refinement of Accessibility Field 341" was presented to MAC at the June 28, 2023 meeting. This proposal addresses concerns raised at that meeting and adds the addition of subfields $0 and $1 to the list of proposed changes.
Following the preference demonstrated by the straw poll conducted at MAC Annual regarding the options provided in Section 3.2. of the discussion paper, this proposal is based on Option 2: Revise to allow values from any vocabulary identified in $2 to be used in $a.
In response to objections raised regarding the existing requirement to use controlled vocabularies in this field, this proposal removes all references to this requirement from the field definition.
Field 341 is currently defined, in part, in the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format as follows:
FIELD DEFINITION AND SCOPE
Information about modes of access to the content of a resource, including its primary mode of access and alternative mode(s) of access.
Each occurrence of the field requires one subfield $a to record the mode of access for which an alternative mode is provided and one or more $b-$e subfields identifying the type of alternative access. Values for subfields $b-$e should be taken from the same controlled vocabulary.
Multiple values from the same source vocabulary may be recorded in the same field in separate occurrences of subfields. Terms from different source vocabularies are recorded in separate occurrences of the field.INDICATORS
First Indicator - Application
# - No information provided
0 - Adaptive features to access primary content
Adaptive features to access primary content of a resource.1 - Adaptive features to access secondary content
Adaptive features to access secondary content of a resource.Second Indicator - Undefined
Undefined and contains a blank (#).SUBFIELD CODES
$a - Content access mode
Mode required to access the content of the resource without using assistive features (one of textual, visual, auditory, or tactile).341 0#$aauditory
The current Field Definition and Scope for 341 restricts the use of the field to describing "alternative modes of access". Rewording of the Field Definition and Scope to broaden its use to describe all accessibility features of a resource would greatly expand the type of resources this field could be used to describe. For example, display transformability or a navigable table of contents in born-accessible electronic books are accessibility features and not alternative modes of access. This proposal suggests adding the phrase "or accessibility features" to the Field Definition and Scope text.
Additionally, the approval of the sapdv source code has highlighted limitations introduced by the inclusion of prescribed values (textual, visual, auditory, tactile) to be used in subfield $a (Content access mode). Schema.org Accessibility Properties for Discoverability Vocabulary provides for 11 modes of access. Requiring the use of English-language terms might prove problematic for institutions not cataloging in English. It also has been observed that including prescribed values for variable fields is contrary to the spirit of the standard. This proposal eliminates the prescribed vocabulary from the subfield definition of subfield $a and removes all references to such in the Field Definition and Scope.
Finally, this paper proposes adding subfields $0 (Authority record control number or standard number) and $1 (Real World Object URI) to the list of subfields authorized for use in this field. Though to date no vocabularies or sources codes that have URIs or standard identifiers appropriate for use in this field have been identified, these subfields are defined for most fields in the format.
(Note: changes indicated by strikethroughs and bold text)
Revise the Field Definition and Scope for MARC Bibliographic field 341 (Accessibility Content) as follows:
FIELD DEFINITION AND SCOPE
Information about modes of access to the content of a resource, including its primary mode of access and alternative mode(s) of access or accessibility features.
Each occurrence of the field requires one subfield $a to record the mode of access for which an alternative mode is provided and one or more $b-$e subfields identifying the type of alternative access. Values for subfields $b-$e should be taken from the same controlled vocabulary.
Multiple values from the same source vocabulary may be recorded in the same field in separate occurrences of subfields. Terms from different source vocabularies are recorded in separate occurrences of the field.
Revise the definition of $a to allow values from any vocabulary to be used in $a.
$a - Content access mode
Mode required to access the content of the resource without using assistive features(one of textual, visual, auditory, or tactile)(for example, textual, visual, auditory, tactile, mathOnVisual).341 0# $amathOnVisual$bdescribedMath$2sapdv
Revise the definition of $2 to reflect the change in the definition of $a (Content access mode).
$2 - Source
Identification of the source of termsin subfields $b to $ewhen they are from a controlled list.
In field 341, define the following subfields:
$0 - Authority record control number or standard number
See description of this subfield in Appendix A: Control Subfields.$1 - Real World Object URI
See description of this subfield in Appendix A: Control Subfields.
Example 1: An ePub enhanced with accessibility features.341 0# $atextual$bprintPageNumbers$bstructuralNavigation$btableOfContents$2sapdv
Example 2: A DAISY audio disc with accessibility features.
341 0# aauditory$dpageBreakMarkers$dpageNavigation$dstructuralNavigation$2sapdv
Example 1: An electronic version of a mathematics textbook with equations presented as images rather than as text, where textual descriptions of equations have been provided.341 0# $amathOnVisual$bdescribedMath$2sapdv
Example 2: A DVD with audio description (French language of cataloging record.)
341 0# $avisuel$dvideodescription
No source codes appropriate for this field that have standard identifiers have been identified.
341 0# $81$avisual$2sapdv$0[value]
341 0# $81$dvidéodescription$0[value]
The ContentAccessibility class/property has not been fully developed in BIBFRAME.
In Field 341 (Accessiblity Content) of the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format:
6.1. Revise the Field Definition and Scope as described in Section 3.1.
6.2. Revise the definition of subfield $a as described in Section 3.2.
6.3. Revise the definition of subfield $2 as described in Section 3.3.
6.4. Add subfields $0 and $1 to the list of subfield codes as described in Section 3.4.
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