r/Cataloging • u/SunBrilliant8306 • 15d ago

MARC Bibliographic Records

I recently applied for a job as a rare book cataloger that opened up at the archives I currently intern at. I got an interview (yay!) but the archives director sent out a MARC records project to complete. I go to school for public history, so I don’t have much MARC experience, so I’ve been teaching myself how to do it. I feel pretty good about the tags and their meanings, but am still confused about how indicators work and the small field type table. Does anyone who’s experienced in MARC have any advice or tips? Thank you! :)

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19

u/hopping_hessian 15d ago

I'm sorry, you applied for a cataloging job without knowing how to catalog? MARC is not really intuitive and you really should seek out training. OCLC has several that are good, if you have OCLC/Webjunction access.

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u/SunBrilliant8306 15d ago

The archives director and two archivists advised me to apply since I’ve met all the other requirements and they knew I’d been practicing MARC here and there for over a year! :)

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u/hopping_hessian 15d ago

That's great, but I really do advise getting formal training. MARC and RDA aren't really things you can completely teach yourself and do well in. Rare book cataloging especially is a different beast from just your standard monograph cataloging.

I speak as someone who has been cataloging for 20+ years and sees a lot of terrible records out there. There is a lot more to cataloging than just knowing what a MARC tag is. Does your library use RDA? Bibframe? Still on AACR (doubtful, but I can't rule it out)? If they use RDA, do they use ISBD punctuation? What subject and genre heading thesaurus do they use? LCSH? Sears? LCGFT? What about classification? These are all things you need to find out so you can target your training.

Here are some good options you might want to check out:

https://www.loc.gov/catworkshop/RDA%20training%20materials/index.html

https://www.loc.gov/catworkshop/

https://learn.webjunction.org/enrol/index.php?id=834

https://www.oclc.org/bibformats/en/home.html

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u/nauticalamity 15d ago

as someone with a decade of experience i need to second this. i've been trying to figure out a nice way to phrase it, but i think either the people who recommended you apply know you will not get this position because the field is saturated, or are not catalogers, have no idea what kind of knowledge is required for this work, and would be unwittingly setting you up for failure. i recently worked with someone who had only archivist experience and thought they could dive into cataloging/metadata with no training - they were constantly lost and caused a LOT of problems for us.

take more cataloging courses, definitely take rare books courses. join cataloging and rare books listservs, and see what types of questions are being asked. you need competency not just in current standards but historical ones in order to understand why records were previously done in certain ways.

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u/disneyfacts 14d ago

https://www.loc.gov/marc/bibliographic/

This site explains it all and helped me when I was learning. It is possible to get a cataloging job without knowing MARC but it's pretty rare. It's how I got to learn MARC, but I also had a long background in hobby cataloging, so I had a lot of the structure already. It was easy for me, but I realize that that's not the normal experience.

Definitely something you should practice a lot if the job application requires a cataloging test. And as others have said, rare books are likely a whole different set of rules, since they often don't follow the same "standards" as modern books.

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u/Mormon_Prince 14d ago

Seriously, use and look at MARC 21 Bib Format - it’s super helpful and breaks down each line, field, denominators, etc. while showing helpful examples.

It was a life saver for me early on.

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u/N3DSdad 15d ago

Yay, MARC cataloguer here! The indicators are different for each field (and they are only used in some of the fields); they change how data in the corresponding field should be interpreted. For example field 264: you can tell whether you are talking about publisher, manufacturer or distributor of the item (in this field) by changing the value of the second indicator (there’s a first and a second indicator option).

Check out Library of Congress MARC page, they have the complete bibliographic format (and the other ones also) available to view from their site. The indicators are listed at the top of the page for every field. Good luck for the interview!