Comparison of MARC Content Designation Utilization in OCLC WorldCat Records with National, Core, and Minimal Level Record Standards

Abstract

Commonly used fields and subfields in 56 million Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) WorldCat bibliographic records are identified based on the analysis of format-specific record sets and the calculation of utilization thresholds, with the purpose of comparing these elements with existing recommendations by Library of Congress (LC) agencies for national, core, and minimal level records. The background and purposes of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) BIBCO, CONSER, and National and Minimal Level Record Requirements are It is proposed that by comparing these prescribed sets of content designation to the frequency counts of actual content designation use by catalogers, parallelisms or incongruities of standards and practice will be revealed. RESEARCH GOALSThis article exists within the context of the MARC Content Designation Utilization (MCDU) project. The Institute of Museum and Library Services awarded a National Leadership Grant to support this project during the 2004-2007 time frame. One of the research goals of the project, to provide empirical evidence to document MARC21 content designation (i.e., field-subfield combinations) use by catalogers, was achieved by frequency counts of all fields and subfields used in the OCLC WorldCat database. OCLC provided the project the complete set of MARC records from WorldCat in May 2007 comprising approximately 56 million records. This served as the dataset analyzed in the MCDU project. Another research objective was to identify commonly used elements in bibliographic records based on the analysis of format-specific record sets and to compare these elements with existing recommendations by LC agencies for national, core, and minimal level records (Moen, 2004). In support of the research objectives, this analysis seeks to address the following research questions: What are the sets of commonly used elements per format, and how do these compare with the elements prescribed in current national, core, and minimal level recommendations or guidelines for cataloging? Conversely, are there elements that are frequently used by catalogers but are not prescribed in current national, core, and minimal level recommendations or guidelines for cataloging? The results of this analysis can provide standards designers and the cataloging community at large with information to LITERATURE REVIEWTo date, only one published empirical study (Lundy, 2006) was located that reports the comparison of content designation use in MARC records with the prescribed elements in the PCC BIBCO Core Record Standards, and no studies were located on the comparison of utilization with National and Minimal Level Bibliographic Record Requirements or CONSER Record Requirements for Full, Minimal, and Core Level Records for Serials. Lundy (2006) conducted a study of Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Books (DCRB) core records from the RLIN and WorldCat databases and examined the records for adherence to the PCC BIBCO Core Standard for Rare Books. Lundy's study presents a very detailed and comprehensive a...

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