manipulating the order of fields in a MARC record

[Aline Soules <aline dot soules at csueastbay dot edu>]

Manipulating
the
Order of Fields in a MARC Bibliographic Record for
Display
Purposes
Until recently, our library has been able to
“re-order” the fields
of a MARC bibliographic record to affect the OPAC display, but
recently, we
discovered that this is not something that the Innovative system
supports,
unless the field is 4XX or higher.  There
are two major areas where we have been doing this (described below) and
I’d
like to talk to another Innovative library that either did this in the
past or
who also does this now in order to find out about possible alternatives.

The first is call number. 
We currently have the following call numbers in the following
fields:

050 – LC call number assigned by LC

086 – government document number (SuDoc)

090 – locally-assigned LC call number

098 – non-LC law call number

099 – locally-assigned access numbers for media
materials,
e.g., VHS 1, VHS 2, etc.  We also place
“Internet” in this field.

We like to retain these numbers, even if we do not
assign
them to a particular item; for example, if a record contains a 050 LC
number
and we assign VHS 1 to the 099 field, we have been “switching” the
order of the
fields so that the VHS 1 number displays. 
Unfortunately, the next time we go into the record to make a
change,
e.g., to a subject heading, we lose the “switch” and our public catalog
then
reverts to displaying the LC number.

Another example is that in cases where the item is
non-music, we also switch the 240 and the 245, so that the title
displays at
the top and the uniform title displays lower down.  With
music, we retain the 240, 245
order.  The same reversion takes place if
we open the record to make a change to any part of the record, related
or
otherwise.

<>Part of our issue may well be indexing, but I&#8217;d like to set
up a call for me and my bibliographic control coordinator to talk with
someone
in another library about this.  If
there&#8217;s anyone out there who&#8217;s dealt with this problem, I&#8217;d really
appreciate a
conference call.  
Thanks.  


Aline

-- 
Aline Soules, Associate University Librarian
California State University, East Bay
25800 Carlos Bee Blvd.
Hayward, CA  94526-2455
tel. 510-885-4596
e-mail:  aline dot soules at csueastbay dot edu



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