MARC21'S 246 2, while it may be used for a distinctive title given an
annual report, conference proceeding, or yearbook, is explicitly not for
analytics for the individual titles in series, not to mention parts of
books or sets. To use it in that way (as has been suggested on Autocat)
really is making up rules.
UKMARK's 248 is used in some countries for multilevel cataloguing. But
248$h, unlike 246$a, may be used as a repeating field for constituent
titles. Other 248 subfields may be used to give complete bibliographic
information for the item. Although it is a repeating field, when used
for multilevel cataloguing, a separate record has usually been prepared
for each item, primarily because of bibliography printing requirements.
The subfields are not entered in alphabetical order, but begin with
$hTitle (or $gnumber). There is a filing indicator for 246$h as for
245$a, one of its advantages over both 246 and 505$t.
The strange (to North Americans) subfield coding is historic; these
subfields were in 245 in the 1st ed. of UKMARC.
I am no fan of multilevel cataloguing, and would favour 248$a (to match
other 24X fields) for the title. One advantage of taking the
field over largely as it is (with perhaps just that one change of $u to
$a), would be to make the switch to MARC21 easier for libraries now
using UKMARC. I suspect many of us in North America would never use any
subfield other than the one for title.
__ __ J. McRee (Mac) Elrod ([log in to unmask])
{__ | / Special Libraries Cataloguing HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/
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