My problem with this line of thought is that it assumes that the MARC
is immutable -- that other systems won't parse the MARC record and
reconstitute it into its own structure, which may very well use the
granularity of the subfields.
The 260 field comes to mind. Not that the data entered there is
always really easy to work with, but it would be impossible as a
single lump.
Discovery systems like VuFind and Blacklight (and probably most
others) also make heavy use of the subfields in the 6xxs for faceting.
And if anybody would use $0 for the 1xxs, 240, and 6xxs, that might be
the most helpful of all.
The MARC to MODS XSLT makes heavy use of the subfield data (as well as
fixed field data) which may provide an indication of where it is
useful.
-Ross.
On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 1:36 AM, Dan Matei <Dan_at_cimec.ro> wrote:
> [Desclaimer: I'm a big fan of fine granularity. Thus the TEI scheme is one of my favourite achievments in our domain.]
>
> Beside MARCview, I do not know a user interface which allows searching within MARC subfields. I suppose there are more,
> but I don't see that in WorldCat or LC search interface, for instance.
>
> OK, the UNIMARC subfields are used to generate the ISBD punctuation. But in MARC 21 case, what is the real need for
> marking-up a field with subfield codes ? Does its usefulness justify the effort ?
>
> LibraryThing manages without subfields. Dear Mr. Spalding, do you miss them ?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Dan Matei
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Dan Matei, director
> Institutul de Memorie Culturală - CIMEC
> Piata Presei Libere nr. 1, CP 33-90
> 013701 București [Bucharest], Romania, www.cimec.ro
> tel. (+4)021 317 90 72; fax (+4)021 317 90 64
> www.cimec.ro
>
Received on Fri Jun 04 2010 - 08:20:48 EDT