MARC Usage in WorldCat

[Roy Tennant]

I have been working on a project for the past year in which I have informed
discussions focused on metadata and cataloging about my progress. This
announcement is going out to a much wider community in case there are
others who are interested.

After about 40 years of using the MARC standard for metadata transfer, and
with various activities now underway to move this data into new kinds of
environments, it seems like a good time to inspect the data we have on hand.

Toward this end, I have reported on the actual usage of MARC tags and
subfields in WorldCat on a quarterly basis for the past year (there are now
over 300 million MARC records in the database). Although the formal, and
accurate, title of the project is “MARC Usage in WorldCat”, I informally
call it my “ground truthing” activity.

"Ground truthing" is the process whereby geographic remote sensing data is
verified or enhanced by on-the-ground observation and measurement. Over the
past year I have performed a similar function for library cataloging. We
have used the MARC standard for many decades, but how, exactly? Which
elements and subfields have actually been used, and more importantly, how?

The site at <http://experimental.worldcat.org/marcusage/> provides field
and subfield counts as well as the specific contents of some subfields
ordered by number of occurrences. There are also visualizations of this
data available.

Besides providing a basis of evidence for use in determining opportunities
and challenges in moving our data into new encodings, this work has already
helped inform our ongoing data quality work at OCLC.

I also entertain requests for reports on specific subfields, just email me
to request or use the link at the bottom of any page on the web site.
Thanks,
Roy Tennant
OCLC Research

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2013-12-09
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