541 Immediate Source of Acquisition Note

Field definition and scope:

Field 541 contains information about the immediate source of acquisition of the described materials and is used primarily with original or historical items, or other archival collections. The original source of acquisition is recorded in field 561 (Ownership and Custodial History) (previously named Provenance Note).

Field 541 is repeated when recording the acquisition of additional material in a collection. An additional field 541 is made for each addition.

The National level record requirement for this field is Optional.

Field 541 is repeatable.

Guidelines for applying content designators:

For indicator and subfield code definitions and examples, National-level (NLR) and Minimal-level (MLR) record requirements, and designator repeatability, see table below:

Position	Description	NLR	MLR	Repeatability
Field 541	Immediate Source of Acquisition Note	O	O	R
Indicator:
First	Privacy	M
#	No information provided	A
0	Private	A
1	Not private	A

Second	Undefined; contains a blank	M

Subfield code:
$a	Source of acquisition	A	O	NR
$b	Address	A	O	NR
$c	Method of acquisition	A	O	NR
$d	Date of acquisition	A	O	NR
$e	Accession number	A	O	NR
$f	Owner	A	O	NR
$h	Purchase price	O	O	NR
$n	Extent	A	O	R
$o	Type of unit	A	O	R
$3	Materials specified	O	O	NR
$5	Institution to which field applies	A	O	NR
$6	Linkage	A	O	NR
$8	Field link and sequence number	O	O	R

Input conventions:

Punctuation

Content designator history:

In 1983, the name of this field was changed from Provenance to clarify its customary usage. At that time, field 561 was defined for provenance information. Records created prior to 1984 may contain either kind of data in field 541.

In 2004, the first indicator was defined as "Privacy." It includes values # as "No information provided," 0 as "Private," and 1 as "Not private."