Page 125 - Cataloging and Classification for Library Technicians, 2nd Edition

Chapter 8

Cataloging on Computers

TERMINOLOGY

delim iter: The char acter, or symbol, used to pre cede each subfield in
the MARC for mat. Depending on the soft ware, dif ferent sym bols are
used, but the most common are $, ≠, and _ .
field: On the MARC for mat, the bibliographic infor mation of each
record is sep arated into different parts, such as author, title, pub lisher,
etc., form ing fields in which each dif ferent part has a separate line
with a num ber attached to the line. Field cor responds to the term
area, as described in AACR2R.
indi ca tor: A one-digit numeric code that fol lows the tag and pre -
cedes the field. For some fields, two num bers are used, one giv ing
instruction to the com puter for pro cessing infor mation, and the other
providing infor mation about the con tent of the field. The two are
inde pend ent num bers.
leader: The leader is the first twenty-four char acters of the MARC
record. Infor mation con tained in the leader includes record sta tus,
type of record, bib liographic level, and oth ers. These are all fixed
fields, and the information is for com puter use only.
MARC: MARC stands for machine read able cataloging. It con sists
of a sys tem of inputting the cataloging infor mation on the computer
following a stan dard devised by the Library of Con gress. This stan -
dardized for mat allows other librar ies to share the data, the computer
to inter pret the data, and users to retrieve the data. MARC has been
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