Smith,Gary wrote:
> Catherine Argus wrote, in part:
>
>>>MARC Discussion Paper No. 2007-DP04
>>>However, if field 004 is considered to be the best way, we feel that
> it is essential to identify the institution whose control number it is.
>
> There's a point here that is obviously not coming across, since several
> people have made similar comments. The paper discusses "the addition of
> field 004 to link one bibliographic record to another in the same
> system." Since the number would come from the same system as that in
> field 001, the symbol identifying the institution would be precisely
> what we already have in field 003. Thus if field 004 is chosen for this
> function, the institution is already identified.
But then if the nature of the link, and its referent(s), are
locally-defined (as is implied by the absence of identification of whose
number it is), why should it not be implemented as a local tag with local
definition? Conversely, if it is contained in records exported from
WorldCat, and many local systems transfer WorldCat's 001 ID number to 035
(relying on OCLC's "oc-" prefix for identification), then unidentified 004
will be a problem if some other record source chooses to use it for
linking functions of its own.
LC may legitimately claim ownership of 010, since they created and
maintain the MARC format; I'm uncomfortable with any other individual
agency virtually claiming ownership of a specific tag, but it seems to me
that this is what's happening here.
Hal Cain
Joint Theological Library
Parkville, Victoria, Australia
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