----------------------------Original message---------------------------- 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