Karen said:

>the original date of publication. Re-issued versions of classics have
>dates like "2008" and no where in the bib record does it say that the
>Work dates from, say, 1813.
 
Yes. Vital information. And MARC had a field for it, 503. Which was
also good for "Originally released as a motion picture ..." in DVD
records. Perhaps this data will be added to the new 264? But that
would not be as good as consistency with legacy records.

I fail to understand why seldom needed esoteric fields are added,
while such a basic one is removed.

A measure of which MARC fields have been coded is no measure of
whether they have been used for discovery by systems, and no guide to
data needed in a future coding system. Some needed data. such as
original publiction date, has often been neither coded nor utilized by
systems.


   __ __ J. McRee (Mac) Elrod ([log in to unmask])
  {__ | / Special Libraries Cataloguing HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/
  ___} |__ \__________________________________________________________