PROPOSAL NO.: 2002-08

DATE: December 18, 2001
REVISED:

NAME: Making the First Indicator Value 0 (U. S. Dept. of Defense Classification) Obsolete in Field 052 of the MARC 21 Bibliographic and Authority Formats

SOURCE: U. S. National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA)

SUMMARY: This paper proposes making the first indicator value 0 (U. S. Dept. of Defense Classification) obsolete and defining value 1 as "U. S. Dept. of Defense Classification" in field 052 to correct a coding mistake made by the U. S. National Imagery and Mapping Agency.

KEYWORDS: Field 052 (BD) (AD); Geographic Classification (BD) (AD)

RELATED: 98-14 (June 1998)

STATUS/COMMENTS:

12/18/01 - Made available to the MARC 21 community for discussion.

01/21/02 - Results of the MARC Advisory Committee discussion - Approved.

03/20/02 - Results of LC/NLC review - Approved.


PROPOSAL NO. 2002-08: Making the First Indicator Value 0 Obsolete in Field 052

1. BACKGROUND

Field 052 is defined for a geographic classification code that represents the geographic area and/or subarea covered by an item. It can provide more precise geographic access than the geographic area code recorded in field 043 (Geographic area code). The first indicator position is defined as "Code source" and contains a value that indicates the source of the code used in subfield $a (Geographic classification area code) and information found in the other subfields. The position is currently defined as:

First Indicator: Code source
# - Library of Congress Classification
0 - U. S. Department of Defense Classification
7 - Source specified in subfield $2

Proposal 98-14 (Additional Code List for Field 052 of the MARC Bibliographic Format) defined the first indicator value 0 in field 052 (Geographic Classification) for the U. S. Department of Defense Classification scheme to accommodate the FIPS 10-4 codes. FIPS 10-4 provides a list of the basic geopolitical entities in the world with the principal administrative divisions for each entity.

2. DISCUSSION

It was recently discovered that the U. S. National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) has incorrectly coded over one million bibliographic records containing field 052 using the first indicator value 1 to indicate the U. S. Department of Defense Classification system. Because NIMA would like to eventually share its records with the entire MARC community, it would like to employ standard MARC coding. Global change is a possible solution to correcting the one million NIMA
records affected, as NIMA is currently developing such a capability within its integrated library system. The system and personnel resources required, however, would be significant.

After an informal query was sent to a large number of military and government libraries about their uses of field 052, it was discovered that none of the respondents' institutions have ever used value 0 in the first indicator position. Moreover, a search of the OCLC and LC databases found no records employing the first indicator value 0 in any occurrence of field 052.

It is proposed to make the first indicator value 0 obsolete and define value 1 as "U.S. Department of Defense Classification" in field 052 to match NIMA's coding practices.

3. PROPOSED CHANGES

In field 052 (Geographic Classification) of the MARC 21 Bibliographic and Authority Formats:

4. EXAMPLES

651 #0 $aBosnia and Hercegovina$vMaps.
052 1# $aBK
 
651 #0 $aVirginia$xMaps.
052 1# $aUS$b51


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