Patterns of Subject Metadata Change in MARC 21 Bibliographic Records for Video Recordings

Abstract

Study reported in this paper analyzed over twenty thousand machine-readable library metadata records in MARC 21 bibliographic format that are based on Resource Description and Access (RDA) standard. The focus of this analysis is on change in subject metadata-data elements designed for representing the aboutness of information objectsover a 6-year period between 2014 and 2020. The analyzed dataset is the entire population of the records representing English-language video recordings in DVD format in WorldCat database as of one year after official transition to RDA data content standard in library metadata creation. Analysis of metadata representing audiovisual materials is needed as audiovisual metadata practices tend to differ from those for other materials due to high occurrence of unique resources. The study includes quantitative and qualitative analyses into the change in the application of data elements (fields and subfields) over time and categorizes the observed change.