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There are several proposals and discussion papers coming before the Machine
Readable Bibliographic Information Committee that may be of interest to the
cartographic community.  In my role as liaison to the MARBI Committee for
MAGERT, I borrow the MAPS-L list to share with you what is going on in the
committee. This message is to inform you of the proposals and discussion papers
that I think are probably of the most interest to the map community.  If you
have any thoughts or concerns about these proposals (or any of the ones I
haven't summarized here), please let me know either through the list or in a
personal e-mail.  My address is [log in to unmask]  The full texts of all the
proposals are available at http://lcweb.loc.gov/marc/marbi/june1998.html
 
Proposal 98-7 ( Recording Incorrect Dates in Field 008/06-14 in the USMARC
Bibliographic Format) suggests that a new code for incorrect dates be added in
the 008/06.  If this proposal passes, items that have a single date would have
the corrected date entered in the 008/07-10 and the incorrect date would be
entered in the 008/11-14.  This would allow searches to be qualified by either
the correct or the incorrect date.  For instances where multiple dates need to
be recorded, it is proposed that the corrected dates would be entered in
008/07-10 and 008/11-14 and the incorrect dates would be coded in Field 046
(Special Coded Dates).  These situations are most likely to occur with rare
maps.
 
Proposal 98-12 (Additional Indicator Value in Field 355 (Security
Classification Control) of the
USMARC Bibliographic Format) comes from the U.S. National Imagery and Mapping
Agency.  It would add a code to the first indicator position to Field 355 that
would indicate that the bibliographic record for an item is classified and not
to be distributed.
 
Proposal 98-14 (Additional Code List for Field 052 of the USMARC Bibliographic
Format) also comes from NIMA.  The intent of the proposal is to allow coding
for geopolitical entities in Field 052 by means other than the current system.
Currently, the only coding allowed for in the 052 Field is based on the G
Classification of LCC.
 
Proposal 98-16 (Nonfiling Characters in All Formats) suggests that two control
characters would be used to mark out the characters that should be ignored in
indexing/filing.  Currently, characters that are to be ignored have an
indicator position where the number of characters to be ignored is given or the
characters are not entered in the record.  Through the establishment of the
control characters, all nonfiling characters would be handled in the same
manner.
 
Discussion Paper No. 110 suggests changes to the 007 Field for Computer Files
in order to accommodate better retrieval and management of digitally
reformatted and preserved materials.  The changes include some slight changes
to some current codes in the 007 field and the addition of seven new character
positions (007/06:Antecedent/Source, 007/07:File formats, 007/08-09:Image Bit
Depth, 007/10:Quality Assurance Target(s), 007/11:Compression,
007/12:Reformatting Aspect).  There are several questions included in the paper
to help guide the discussion that will take place.  Two of the general
questions are: Could it be considered to establish a new 007 for preservation
computer files instead of using the established one ; Given that it would be
difficult to enforce that the new positions be mandatory for a specific type of
computer file, would it be preferable to propose that they be highly
recommended for preservation computer files?
 
These are the proposals and the discussion paper that I think are of the most
interest to the cartographic community.  If you have any comments on these or
the other agenda items for MARBI, please feel free to share them either with
the list or with me ([log in to unmask]).
 
Thank you
 
Susan Moore
Cataloging Department
Rod Library
University of Northern Iowa
Cedar Falls, IA