Library Systems & Services, Inc., the vendors of MINI MARC have produced a handy guide for those among us who have trouble remembering whether subfields $b and $c are found in both the 240 and 245 fields of the MARC format for books or whether "s" is still a valid value for position 39 of the 008 field. The MARC Format Reference Card: Books summarizes the field tags and subfield codes used by the Library of Congress format and the OCLC books format, indicating valid values, repeatability and non-repeatability status, mandatory values, and historic usages which are no longer applicable. In addition to showing LC and OCLC usage, the guide also indicates the practices of the National Agricultural Library, National Library of Medicine and National Library of Canada. Copies of the Guide are available for $3.50 and the company plans to produce guides to the formats for other types of materials in the future.
[Contact: Library Systems & Services, Inc., General Motors Building, Suite 100, 1395 Picard Drive, Rockville, MD 20850. (301) 258-0200.]
