Usually when a change occurs in MARC coding or LC practice I get used to
it (like "Bibliography:    "  becoming "Includes bibliographical
reference (   )").  But the loss of 503 and the move of 265 information
to 037 bug me more and more.

Some of my law firms request date of previous edition in bibliographic
records.  Prior to FI we used 503 for this.  It seems silly to dump this
information into the general note field, while at the same time adding
several specific tag numbers for information which used to be in 500.

We use 265 for the address of the publisher for law symposia.  (These
are often not commercial publishers, and their addresses may not be in
Books in Print : Publishers.)  Putting this address up among standard
and knowledge numbers makes no sense to us.  Some records we derive have
the address in 260$a( ) following the city, according to AACR2 1.4C7;
field 265 is more in keeping with this AACR2 placement of that
information than 037.

Can these decisions be revisited next time around?  Fortunately Catss
allows the continued use of both these fields, but I understand they can
no longer be filed in some bibliographic utilities.

Mac

J. McRee (Mac) Elrod | Special Libraries Cataloguing, Inc.
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