CIP and MARC records

The more I read and the more assignments that I complete for this course, the more I realize how many layers there are to MARC records. At first I found processing the information for writing the code for MARC records to be very overwhelming. Now, I only find it slightly overwhelming! ;)

It was beneficial to write the MARC records from scratch for a number of items while using examples from AMICUS and The Library of Congress to guide me. This week's lesson is helping me fine-tune my MARC records for my digital library project as I am becoming aware of tags that may have been omitted in actual MARC records that would be very beneficial to include in the MARC records that I am writing.

Being able to read about my classmates' experiences when comparing CIP to MARC records has brought up scenarios that I didn't encounter when examining the three books that I chose for Lesson 7 this week. My three books had relatively complete MARC records,  with complete summaries and appropriate subject headings. I did, however, come across a book that had no CIP data and I had never noticed that in a book before. I learned that this might have been because it was a "mass market paperback". From reading my classmates' postings, I saw that some of them had come across books where the MARC records did not contain summaries and had limited subject headings.

In my two years in the library I have learned that if relevant key words are not included in the summaries or in the subject headings, then it will be impossible to locate appropriate books for teachers for popular themes or topics. In the future, as I come across these omissions, I will note them and submit them to our cataloguing department in our district library, as all changes to MARC records must be made by them.

I am now off to improve the MARC records that I have written for the items in my digital library...