On 3/6/13 3/6/13 € 12:26 PM, "J. McRee Elrod" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Roy said:
> 
>> Recently I released a new web site/temporary service to report on how MARC
>> has actually been used ...
> 
> Don't you mean "assigned"?  Whether it was assigned or not bears
> little if any relation to ILS or OPAC utilization.

No, I mean "used". MARC fields can be created (and often are), but that
doesn't mean they are used. This project is not about catalog systems, only
the data that is available to be used in such systems. It will be up to
someone else to study the use of the data within particular library systems.
My goal is simply to provide data on the use of MARC as a data standard so
that discussions about MARC data can be informed by actual facts.

> Also, since some fields apply to only certain genre, the number of
> times assigned bears little if any relationship to importance.

I am simply reporting on the data actually found in the field. Although such
work might *imply* relative importance (a field that has been used 25M times
seems to indicate an intrinsic importance that a field used 5,000 times may
not), I have made no such assertions on this site.
Roy