DCRB & MARC Format

[Elizabeth Robinson]

Patrick et al.

I'm putting my responses in between ** so you can distinguish them. 

6. 740 : There is a beautiful example of a valid 740 in MARC Formats:

	100 1  Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich,$d1860-1904.
	240 10 Vishnevyi sad.$lEnglish
	245 14 The cherry orchard ; Uncle Vanya /$cAnton  Chekhov.
	700 12 Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich,$d1860-1904.$tDiadia Vania.$lEnglish.$f1969
	740 0   Uncle Vanya. 

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Instead of doing a 740 on the bib here, I would use the English title in the uniform title *authority* record:

	100 10 Chekhov, Anton ... $tDiadia Vania. $l English
	400 10 Chekhov, Anton ... $tUncle Vanya

(NAFL86115391already exists and looks like this.)

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Provenance: why would one want to use a distinct field for the "last or
only known owner" before item reached a repository?  561 does trace
ownership history, but if all the ownership history there is to trace is
the known fact that the item  bears Gertrude Stein's bookplate, then it
appears to me one might record it  in 561.  It seems to me that the basic
issue (at least what I intended to raise) is:  is 561 intended primarily to
record "ownership and custodial history" of archival material (as I happen
to think it is), or, as my examples try to do, should it be used for the
somewhat different "rare book" concept of provenance of individually
cataloged printed items?  My examples of 561 could equally well have been
tagged "500" (per several good examples in LC MARC Formats).  I did not use
590, since I view this as a "locally defined field."  At Berkeley, we have
two such "locally defined fields: "PRV" and "BIB"; I gather that some
libraries put in 590 all of the information which Berkeley currently splits
between PRV and BIB as in the following example:

	PRV Signed on t.p. by Adam Smith, with the bookplate of J. P. Morgan.
	BIB   Bound in blue morocco, gilt.

Thanks for this input. 
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Yes, Huntington usage of 590 for provenance or any other copy-specific information is the equivalent of UCB's PRV and BIB. As for 561 for all formats, that would be fine with me, but as the field is currently defined, it specifically says from point of creation to current ownership. As long as it says that, I don't see how I can use it with very incomplete provenance info. 

There is, however, field 541 for the immediate source of acquisition which I suppose libraries could be using for books. Maybe some do. It is a formatted note and would require one parcelling the statement into subfields. Not the end of the world to do, but I think it would be nice to allow libraries to continue to use 590 for any copy-specific info they want to state, including provenance. 

As for just 500, one can use $5 with it too. I have not done so myself, however, unless there was a question in my mind about the copy-specific-ness of the element I'm describing (e.g. $5 on the back of a 501 for a "with" item I'm not sure is copy-specific or universal). I don't think there's any rule about that, just what I do and what libraries I've worked at do. I run into so many records that use 500 (without $5) for no-question-about-it copy-specific info, and it drives me just a tad daff (daffer than usual, i.e.).
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--Elizabeth A. Robinson
  Principal Rare Book Cataloger
  Huntington Library
  erobinson@huntington.org