Record Content Responsibility (Responsible Parties Rule)

The MARC 21 data formats serve as a vehicle for data of all types from any organization. In general, the responsibility for the data content, content designation, and transcription of information within a record may be determined by examination of the field indicated in the responsible parties section below. The data content of certain data elements, however, is restricted when the element is an agency-assigned or a controlled-list data element.

Responsible Parties:

In unmodified records, the organization identified as the

original cataloging source in 008/39 (Authority and Bibliographic) and/or

originating agency subfield $a (Original cataloging agency) of field 040 (Cataloging Source or Record Source depending on format)

is responsible for the content of the record.

The organization identified as the transcribing agency in subfield $c of field 040 is responsible for the content designation and transcription of the data.

In modified records, the organizations identified in subfields $a (Original cataloging agency) and $d (Modifying agency) of field 040 are collectively responsible for the content of the record. Organizations identified as transcribing or modifying agencies in subfields $c and $d of field 040 are collectively responsible for the content designation and transcription of the data.

Agency-assigned data element:

An agency-assigned data element is one whose content is determined by a designated agency and is the responsibility of that agency, for example, bibliographic field 222 (Key Title) which is the responsibility of an ISSN Center. While it is usually input by the designated agency, it may be transcribed by another organization. However, when the content designation and transcription of the agency-assigned data is performed by another organization, the responsibility of these functions is determined by the Responsible Parties Rule.

Controlled-list data element:

(Previously known as authoritative-agency data element.)

Certain data elements contain data from controlled lists maintained by designated agencies, e.g., the MARC Code List for Geographic Areas in field 043 (Geographic Area Code) of bibliographic, authority, and community information records.

These elements are indicated at the field or subfield level in MARC 21 and only values from the designated lists may be used. If a change or addition is desirable for a list, the maintenance agency for the list should be consulted.