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DATE: May 22, 2025
REVISED:
NAME: Defining New Indicators for Unpublished Series and Collection Series in Field 830 of the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format
SOURCE: British Library
SUMMARY: This paper examines the case for adding new indicators to the 830 (Series Added Entry-Uniform Title) field in the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format to support the recording of unpublished and collection series.
KEYWORDS: Field 830 (BD) ; Series Added Entry-Uniform Title (BD); Field 830, 1st indicator (BD); Type of series (BD); Series (BD); Subfield $5, in field 830 (BD); Institution to which field applies (BD)
RELATED: 2010-02
STATUS/COMMENTS:
05/22/25 – Made available to the MARC community for discussion.
06/26/25 – Results of MARC Advisory Committee discussion: MAC expressed many reservations about the paper. There was a lack of clarity around the distinction between the two types of series; there were sentiments that these constitute strictly local data that did not warrant articulation in MARC, as well as consistency concerns between the indicator position differences between X30 and X00, X10, X11 entries for name-title configurations. There was support for expanding the scope of the paper beyond the 830 under consideration, to the 800, 810, 811 entries. There was discussion about wider use cases. Ultimately, consensus was achieved that the use case could be adequately addressed by the existing use of $5 for local applicability of the field and its contents. The paper will not return as a proposal.
When recorded in the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format, series usually refer to published series. These are mostly sourced from series title pages and have series statements transcribed in 490 fields. Then, if the series is traced, an authorized version is entered in the 830 field (Series Added Entry-Uniform Title).
However, there are situations where there is a need to record unpublished series, particularly when dealing with archival or other unpublished materials. Many organizations do this, using options including those outlined in section 2.5 of this discussion paper. Yet, excluding local fields, these methods do not allow for linking with authority files to create authorized access points.
This paper discusses creating a provision for authorized unpublished series and having separate indicators to differentiate between published and unpublished series. A further suggestion is also made to add an indicator for collection series specifically.
Regarding precedent, MARC Proposal No. 2010-02 created the ability to add a $5 value to an 830 field for recording digital collections as series "in records for local or regional digital preservation projects" to indicate the institution to which the series applies. This paper seeks to expand on that, and allow recording collections as series more generally, potentially again using $5 to flag the institution whose series it is.
Field 830 is currently partly defined in the MARC 21 Bibliographic Formats with the following indicator values:
830 - Series Added Entry-Uniform Title (R)
Field Definition and Scope
Series added entry consisting of a series title alone.
An 830 field is usually justified by a series statement (field 490) or a general note (field 500) relating to the series. For reproductions, it may be justified by a series statement in subfield $f of field 533 (Reproduction Note).Indicators
First - Undefined
# - Undefined
Second - Nonfiling characters
0 - No nonfiling characters
1-9 - Number of nonfiling characters
At the British Library the Sound and Moving Image Catalogue (SAMI) is being transferred from a proprietary version of MARC: i.e., SAMI-MARC into MARC21. This is to integrate the Sound and Moving Image records with the rest of the British Library catalogue.
The SAMI records are predominantly made up of sound and music content, including: oral histories, radio and television broadcasts and popular music videos. Many of the resources described in the SAMI Catalogue are unique in nature.
In SAMI-MARC series are split into three separate fields: published, unpublished and collection series. Collection series are also unpublished in nature. The British Library is searching for a way of replicating this in MARC21, to support the data transfer from SAMI-MARC.
The requirement is to record both published and unpublished series as well as collection series in a way that allows the three to co-exist as distinctly labeled entities at the bibliographic level and to be authorized.
The approach set out using the 830 field and indicators was chosen in part to facilitate mapping series headings to 130 fields in the authority records.
Within archival materials information about collections is important to record and can be complex. According to DACS (Describing Archives: A Content Standard) two key archival principles are: showing materials in context and abiding by an idea called respect des fonds, which prioritizes keeping collections of material together as they were created. Recording collection series in MARC would support both of these principles. Being able to link these to curators, collectors and other information such as provenance would be useful too.
Because this is valuable information many institutions already display collection series in MARC records, using various local practices. The same is true of unpublished series. In SAMI records some uses of unpublished series are to group unpublished items that are not part of an official collection and to subdivide official collections. There is a value in standardizing the approach to these series and collections, while making them visible to users and other institutions.
End users would benefit from making unpublished and collection series into controlled access points by being able to search, group and browse them. A wider variety of connections could be surfaced by institutions showcasing their internal collections. Furthermore, there would be scope for enriching related content suggestions.
Listed below are some foreseen issues which the proposed changes might create and accompanying mitigations.
As both unpublished series and collection series are liable to be local in scope there may be a need for a $5 to denote the institution to which the field applies. These would be useful when record sharing, to help others filter out unwanted local fields. The $5 would not be necessary in the case of published series as these should apply universally.
Other options exist for this, for example, using a $2 to indicate title authority source code. However this paper prefers the use of $5 on account of most institutions already having values they can use in $5, and also in terms of precedent, as seen in MARC Proposal 2010-02.
Allowing a host of new series authorities to be shared, and for many of them to contain devised values, could potentially cause issues with name uniqueness if series names were too generic. In examples from SAMI-MARC unpublished and collection series do appear to be distinctive in nature, however this issue could again be mitigated by use of a $5 as outlined above.
To minimize issues with legacy data, if the indicator 1 is left blank it will be defined as "no information provided", which will decrease the need for retroactive addition of indicators in older records.
Before arriving at the decision to write a discussion paper several other options were considered as to where to potentially map the unpublished and collection series.
In some systems it is possible to record unpublished series not supported by cataloging rules as added entries using local fields. For example OCLC uses the 899 field. However British Library policy is to minimize use of local fields, therefore, this paper has been written to canvas the community and see if others might have similar needs which could be met by adapting the 830 field.
A further reason fields like 899 were not feasible relates to a technical issue of the SAMI data migration. Authority headings and their equivalent bibliographic record statements need to have matching tens/units in the MARC field number, for example matching an 830 bibliographic with a 130 authority uniform title heading.
Potentially utilizing field 730 (Added Entry-Uniform Title) was discussed, however there were problems with this approach. It was felt that the contents of the SAMI fields seemed better suited to treatment as series rather than uniform titles, particularly the unpublished series. This is because the fields contained series statements, not work titles. The subfield options in 830 fit better too, including $v for sequential designation and $y for data provenance. Using a 730 would also not have solved the need for differentiating between the 3 types of series. Finally, the 730 was being reserved for mapping other SAMI fields that contained multiple works.
An option was needed that allowed linking series titles to authority records, which neither Linking Entry or Notes fields did.
Using an untraced 490 field (Series Statement) was not feasible due to the need for authority control. Meanwhile, using multiple 490s and 830s did not create the necessary distinction between the published, unpublished, and collection series.
Regarding holdings there is currently no 830 field or equivalent in the MARC Holdings Format which is one obstacle. Secondly, the series information already existed at the bibliographic level. Moving it to the holdings level would not have been practically feasible and again would not have linked cleanly with authority records.
In terms of authority records this paper is not proposing changes to the Authority 130 field as this is not necessary for the SAMI data transfer use case, where the differentiation is needed at the bibliographic level.
In field 830 (Series Added Entry-Uniform Title), define the first indicator and revise the Guidlines for Applying Content Designators, as follows:
■ INDICATORS
First Indicator – Type of series
Distinguishes between different varieties of series.# – No information provided
1 – Published series
Any series created by a publisher.2 – Unpublished series
Any series not created for public distribution or sale, other than a collection series.3 – Collection series
An unpublished collection title used as a series added entry.
GUIDELINES FOR APPLYING CONTENT DESIGNATORS
(Added text in guidelines section in bold and underlined, removed text is struck through)
Description ofthe first indicator position andall subfield codes, as well as input conventions for the 830 field are given in the X30 Uniform Titles-General Information section. Because the first and second indicators are unique for this fielddifferent for various fields,it isthey are not described in the general information section, butisare described below.
Example 1:245 10 $a Beethoven :$b symphony no. 2.
264 #1 $c 2016.
490 1# $a Stefan Blunier Complete Beethoven Symphonies
830 10 $a Stefan Blunier complete Beethoven symphonies.
Additional Notes:
Field 830 models a published series, with first indicator 1.Example 2:
245 03 $a [A world in London]
264 #0 $c not after 2020-10-14.
500 ## $a "Unpublished series title devised by cataloguer." $5 UK
830 20 $a National Radio Archive (NRA) $5 UK
Additional Notes:
Field 830 models an unpublished series with a first indicator 2 and a subfield 5 denoting the institutional applicability. There is also a 500 note explaining title provenance.Example 3:
245 00 $a Unverified recording - Paul Holt : British and Asian birds WA 2003/035.
264 #0 $c not after 2007.
830 30 $a British and Asian birds WA 2003/035. $y (dpenmw)collection title devised by curator $5 UK
Additional Notes:
Field 830 models a collection series, with first indicator 3, and a data provenance note in subfield $y explaining title source, as well as a subfield 5.Example 4:
245 00 $a Antrobus Soul Cakers 2022-11-04.
264 #0 $c 2022-11-04.
830 30 $a Jim Hickson Collection. $y collection title specified by donor $5 UK
Additional Notes:
Field 830 models a collection series using first indicator 3 and a data provenance note in subfield $y without optional coding.Example 5:
245 00 $a [Minehead hobby horse, 1986-05-03]
264 #0 $c 1986-05-03.
490 1# $a [Traditional Music in England Project]
490 1# $a [Bob and Jacqueline Patten Collection]
500 ## $a "Unpublished series title taken from related project." $5 UK
500 ## $a "Collection series title devised by donor." $5 UK
830 20 $a Traditional Music in England Project. $5 UK
830 30 $a Bob and Jacqueline Patten Collection. $5 UK
Additional Notes:
This example models a record with both an unpublished series and a collection series.
The 490 fields model using brackets to record series statements.Example 6:
245 10 $a Tempest.
264 #1 $c 2018.
490 1# $a Beethoven Piano Sonatas ;$v Volume 7
830 #0 $a Beethoven piano sonatas ;$v Volume 7.
Additional Notes:
Field 830 models a legacy record with a # in the first indicator, for no information provided.
The current MARC-to-BIBFRAME conversion creates Hubs from series statements and headings and uses status codes to differentiate between transcribed series statements and traced series headings. A similar approach could be used to treat the types of series proposed in this paper, but additional analysis is necessary.
6.1. Do you agree that there is a use for distinguishing unpublished series in the MARC Bibliographic Format?
6.2. Do you agree that there is a use for distinguishing collection series in the MARC Bibliographic Format?
6.3. Are there any other types of unpublished series or collections that might justify their own 830 indicator?
6.4. Is the use of $5 a suitable means of flagging institution regarding unpublished and collection series?
6.5. Should we include further 8XX fields in a proposal and, if so, what use cases would they satisfy?
6.6. Are there any options for adding unpublished and collection titles not covered in this paper?
6.7. Are there any potential consequences that this paper does not address?
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