As we prepare for the Midwinter meeting in Philadelphia, I wanted to give you a summary of the items coming before the MARC Advisory Committee that might be of interest to the cartographic community.

Discussion paper 2020-DP01 considers options for modernizing the existing field 856 and/or the definition of a new field 857; a new subfield $e to account for access, use, and reproduction information; and the possibility of reassigning the existing subfield $7 for access status. Field 856 was originally proposed in 1993 and there have been numerous changes in the ways people access content electronically. While there have been some changes made to the field, there is a need seen by some to make more overall changes. The discussion paper presents three options: 1. make currently "unused" subfields in field 856 obsolete to make room for full access and use information; 2. Define a new field 857(?) that parallels field 856 but is to be used only for Open Access URIs. This field would carry over only the subfields from the 856 field while adding subfields for access and use; or 3. Define a new field 857(?) keeping only the subfields need today and adding new ones needed for access and use and make field 856 obsolete.

Proposal 2020-01 seeks to add an indicator value to field 883 - Machine-generated Metadata Provenance to indicate that the metadata has been created by a human cataloger. This will also require changing the name of the indicator and the field. 

There is a proposal to add $0 to fields 310 and 321 in the bibliographic format and a discussion paper to add $0 to 504 and 525 that come from LC's work on BIBFRAME. Since we don't use these much in cartographic cataloging, I'll just mention them here.

Discussion paper 2020-DP03 explores added new repeatable subfields to record illustrative content and sound content of resources. This field could be used in conjunction with field 300 $b.

Discussion paper 2020-DP05 suggests reinstating field 241 (Transliterated Title) and updating the indicators, subfields, and revising the field definition and scope.The Library of Congress is planning to use vernacular for descriptions again, especially for transcription. Therefore, the title in the 245 will be in vernacular script. The suggestion is to reinstate field 241 - Transliterated title.

Discussion Paper 2020-DP06 describes defining a new field to accommodate RDA "manifestation statements" in the MARC 21 bibliographic format. This would allow manifestation statements to be recorded in the Work record. 

Discussion Paper 2020-DP07 discusses the potential ways to encode the new RDA element "extension plan" in the MARC Bibliographic and Authority formats. Currently, there are places in the MARC bibliographic format that allows someone to infer some of the extension plan for some resources. However, there are some extension plans that aren't adequately covered in the MARC bibliographic and authority formats. The suggestion is to create a new field to cover all the extension plans. If you want to see the list, the paper is at https://www.loc.gov/marc/mac/2020/2020-dp07.html

Please send any questions or comments to me.

Susan Moore

University of Northern Iowa

Cedar Falls, IA  50614