Overview

teleMARC bibliographic (beyond books) is the second part in the teleMARC bibliographic course series arranged by the Programme: Bibliographic Services, National Library of South Africa.

Since the late nineties, when the South African library and information services (LIS) community decided to adopt MARC 21 (then USMARC), and the teleMARC bibliographic (basic) Course was presented during 1999, the community has developed and grew into MARC 21. This is not only true for the MARC 21 pioneers – especially those involved in cataloguing and bibliographic standards – but also for newcomers to the MARC 21 scene. A contributing factor to the MARC 21 expansion is the creation of South African library consortia, and the subsequent decision regarding their integrated library systems – which is, more often than not, MARC 21 based.

In South Africa, MARC 21 has become an important communication format for bibliographic information available in records for library collections – mostly consisting of books, but also inclusive of serials, and to a larger extent covering other physical formats. With a basic MARC 21 knowledge applicable to books, the time is ripe to explore MARC 21 in its context to other physical formats … which is the aim of the teleMARC bibliographic (beyond books) Course, presented during November 2005 for the first time.

Content & organisation

The scene for the teleMARC bibliographic (beyond books) Course is set by the preliminary sections:

1 – Acknowledgements & communication

2 – Course description

3 – Aim & learning objectives

4 – Cataloguing environment

Background information is provided to support learners in participating in the Course: 7 – Glossary, 8 – Bibliography.

Worksheets (section 6) are an integral part of the Course, but the approach and performance level is different from the teleMARC bibliographic (basic) Course: no questions with short answers, but exercising record creation and verification. Record creation overlaps with the teleMARC bibliographic (basic) Course, but it will also be expected of learners to identify existing records from available catalogues – manual, or computerized– and verify their bibliographic content according to the applicable bibliographic standards for the specific material types.

The larger part of the Course is covered by section 5 – Course outline, where sound recordings, videorecordings, electronic resources and serials are looked at. Not all manifestations are investigated, but a selection, and they are looked at in terms of their common characteristics. A profile is created for each material type in terms of introductory remarks, followed by AACR2R cataloguing principles, and the application of MARC 21 regarding control and data fields. Certain MARC 21 foreknowledge is expected of learners, while you will be introduced to new, specific MARC 21 information. Knowledge refers to bibliographic description and allocation of access points based on AACR2R and other standards, and coding of this data correctly according to MARC 21. Foreknowledge and new knowledge are summarized, and practical examples are given to illustrate the bibliographic descriptions of records for these material types. Afterwards, learners should put their knowledge to work in completing the Worksheets, mentioned earlier.

NB: Where codes are listed (i.a. tags and subfields), these are not normally the complete lists as they appear in the MARC 21 Manual.