Re: arsclist Raw Marc Record, separators et al

["A. Ralph Papakhian" <papakhi@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

hi,
this is all explained in great deal on the MARC web pages.
http://www.loc.gov/marc/specifications/spechome.html
e.g.

Basic (ASCII) and Extended (ANSEL) Latin
MARC UCS UTF-8 NAME
00-1A   [RESERVED]
1B 001B 1B ESCAPE (Unlikely to occur in UCS/Unicode)
1C   [RESERVED]
1D 001D 1D RECORD TERMINATOR / GROUP SEPARATOR
1E 001E 1E FIELD TERMINATOR / RECORD SEPARATOR
1F 001F 1F SUBFIELD DELIMITER / UNIT SEPARATOR
20 0020 20 SPACE, BLANK / SPACE
7C 007C 7C VERTICAL BAR (FILL) / VERTICAL LINE
etc.

A. Ralph Papakhian, Indiana University Music Library
Bloomington, IN 47405 812/855-2970 papakhi@xxxxxxxxxxx
co-owner: MLA-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

On Mon, 16 Dec 2002, Jeanette Berard wrote:

> >>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
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