Re: arsclist Raw Marc Record, separators et al

["Jeanette Berard" <JBERARD@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>On the 7th line (which begins 000.0), you may or may not see a
question
mark after N/A<space>><space>. 
<snip>

The "?" are indicators in MARC commonly called a "pipe" or a delimiter.
 In some translations they'll appear as a broken bar, sometimes a
question mark or dollar sign.  However they are visualized, they
indicate the beginning of a specific section (sub-field) of the field. 
The delimiter character is always followed by an alpha-numeric character
which indicates to translator programs the division of each segment of
the field.  To make it more complicated, the same delimiters indicate
different sub-fields in different fields.  

This might seem unreasonable, but it allows the translator software to
index much more quickly and effectively.  You should be able to filter
search results so that you can separate what type of hits you get when
you search on a given term.  (I thought the response George gave about
indexing and speed was very good.)

>>>The group separator is hd 1D and, I suspect, allows the next
recording to follow immediately.
>>>I do not understand all the characters that precede the information
and
what they accomplish, but it seems clear that unit, record, and group
separators delimit fields, which are set up in advance. I don't know
what
happens when a field is blank. Someone who has actually made a MARC
record can clue us in.
<snip>

If a MARC field is blank, it dissappears from the record.  

>>>I don't know whether MARC is a format everyone on the Planet must
use or whether it is a program that you can fit in fields to suit
yourself (which
raises compatibility programs). So I don't know what happens when you
want to add matrices, recording dates, and so on, which of course
discographers want to do.
<snip>

Unlike many database programs, such as Access, FileMaker, etc., there
is not a rigid data form that must have blanks for all potential data. 
The software uses the field tags to create the structure.   MARC has
fields that can be used to include the matricies, recording dates, etc. 
IASA does have standards for adding this kind of information to a MARC
record.  

One can use translator programs to convert almost any type of data into
MARC.  (Mind you I'm not saying this is easy!  There are a couple of
companies out there that make a business out of this type of data
translation.)  I personally have exported databases into text files,
sent them into ASCII, and manipulated the ASCII strings into MARC
formatting.  I have also gone the other way and exported MARC records
into ASCII strings for  database programs.   

Jeanette


Jeanette Berard
Special Collections Librarian
Thousand Oaks Library System
(805) 449-2660 xt228
jberard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
-
For subscription instructions, see the ARSC home page
http://www.arsc-audio.org/arsclist.html
Copyright of individual posting is owned by the author of the posting and
permission to re-transmit or publish a post must be secured
from the author of the post.